I searched Google and these forums for a bit, but I can't seem to figure out how to make my program detect which operating system it's running on. I'm using system("clear") for Linux and system("cls") for Windows to clear the screen, but my program needs to know how to tell which one to use. Any help would be appreciated.

(first off, my brain shut off 1 hour ago but here's my two cents..)

can you add vb or perhaps take a peak at some vb functions for hints on logic or a lead to search further into it?

GetVersion() and GetVersionEx() or http://www.mvps.org/vbnet/index.html?code/system/getversionex.htm or uhm... search on msdn.microsoft.com or sourceforge.net? sorry i don't have any exact answer for you at the moment. :(

?

Do you mean which platform your code is going to be compiled on? A linux/windows binary isn't going to run on Windows/linux OS I don't believe unless it's through an emulator.

You might try searching for "cross compiling" to find some source code samples. The samples there typically have such things as OS dependency, but I don't know the procedure myself.

santa: vb is not only sh*t but doesnt run on any os other than windows

Tiedye: if you want to do it at runtime it could be a bit difficult, you could check for uname or other files specific to the different OSs, however the best way i think would be to use something like this

#define Linux
...
#ifdef Linux
system("clear");
#else
system("cls");
#endif

or

#define clearscreen "clear" (would change to cls for windows of course)
...
system(clearscreen)

Then just package your sources so the windows version defines as Windows/cls and the other as Linux/clear

Assuming you are using GCC, there are predifind symbols that identify the platform. For Linux, you can use __linux__ or linux, but the first is recommended since it is POSIX compliant.

// Declare a function to handle clear screens
// independant of the operating system
// (Linux or Windows only)
void clear();

int main ()
{
...

// When you want to clear the console,
// call the clear() function
clear();

...

}
// Function
void clear()
{
//System specific code for linux/windows
#ifdef __linux__ || linux
system("cls");
#else
system("CLEAR");
#endif

}//end clear()

For more information look up "portable C++".