C++ Compile error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token [closed] - c++

Question

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, visit the help center.
Closed 10 years ago.
Very specific C++ compilation syntax error that I can't figure out a solution to: I'm fairly new to C++ and read up on functions being passed as parameters. The compile error doesn't make sense to me because I've read the code over-and-over. Please help.
Edit: I removed the waitpid(pid_t,int,int) and stuck with just system() commands. Thanks for the help everyone.
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
int main(){
/* puts apt-get purge text into ~$ purge_e_output */
system("sudo apt-get purge enlightenment > purge_e_output.txt");
system("echo **Pid of apt-get**");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
system("echo **REMOVING ENGLIGHTENMENT**");
system("sudo apt-get purge enlightenment");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
/* puts apt-get autoremove text into ~$ autoremove_e_output */
system("sudo apt-get autoremove > autoremove_e_output.txt");
system("echo **Pid of apt-get**");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
system("echo **REMOVING E DATA**");
system("sudo apt-get autoremove");
system("echo **Pid of apt-get**");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
/* puts apt-get autoclean text into ~$ autoclean_e_output */
system("sudo apt-get autoclean > autoclean_e_output.txt");
system("echo **Pid of apt-get**");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
system("echo **CLEANING**");
system("sudo apt-get autoclean");
system("echo **Pid of apt-get**");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
/* reinstall englightenment */
system("echo **REINSTALLING**");
system("sudo apt-get install enlightenment");
system("echo **Pid of apt-get**");
system("pidof apt-get");
try{
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
} catch(...){}
/* logs */
system("echo && echo Logs for wtf just happened:");
system("echo && echo ~$ purge_e_output.txt && echo ~$ autoremove_e_output.txt && echo ~$ autoclean_e_output.txt");
}
Compile error:
~$ g++ JIC.cpp -o JIC
JIC.cpp: In function ‘int main()’:
JIC.cpp:12: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token
JIC.cpp:18: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token
JIC.cpp:26: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token
JIC.cpp:34: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token
JIC.cpp:42: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token
JIC.cpp:49: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token
JIC.cpp:58: error: expected ‘,’ or ‘...’ before ‘(’ token

Answer 1

This doesn't make sense in that place:
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);

Answer 2

You cannot do this
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
instead you need to actually create instances of the variables that you want to pass to this function. For example
pid_t pid = getpid();
int status = // set to some value that you choose
then you can call your function like this
pid_t pid2 = waitpid(pid, &status, WUNTRACED);
now pid2 is the value returned by the waitpid function.
I would strongly advise you to do a little more reading - whether it be books or tutorials - as your question shows you don't yet have a strong grasp of the language. I mean absolutely no offence by that at all - just trying to help.

Answer 3

The line
pid_t waitpid(pid_t getpid("apt-get"), int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED);
looks like a function declaration, both to me and to the C++ compiler. It looks like you're trying to declare a function named waitpid whose return type is pid_t, which takes three parameters, a pid_t, an int*, and an int. However, the name of a parameter can't be getpid("apt-get"), so besides this being the wrong place in the file for a function declaration, you can't interpret this as a function declaration because it tries to use a function call as the name of a parameter.
Conversely, if you try to interpret this line as a function call to a function named waitpid (that's already defined), getpid("apt-get") makes sense as a parameter because it means you want to pass the result of the getpid function as the first parameter to the waitpid function. However, the rest of that line is incorrect syntax for a function call, because the types of the parameters to a function call should not be specified inline - you should be passing it parameters that have already been defined as variables or functions. A syntactically-correct call to the waitpid function might look like this:
int* statusPtr = ...;
int WUNTRACED = ...;
pid_t myPid = waitpid(getpid("apt-get"), &statusPtr, WUNTRACED);
And the following definition might appear elsewhere:
pid_t waitpid(pid_t pid, int *statusPtr, int WUNTRACED) {
...
}