system() call?

[cfk]

i'm trying to make some kind of shell(unix sh) for fun and i wanted to know how to make my shell call other programs
i found one way by calling

Code:

system("the called app");

are there better alternatives and more portable that the system() call?
ps: i'm coding on win32 with codeblocks cuz VS2008 hates me, freezes and crashes and sorry for my bad english

[myork]

Code:

pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid == 0)
{
    exec("the called app");
}

[cfk]

doing some searching about exec() found this

The

Code:

system()

call will execute an OS shell command as described by a character command string. This function is implemented using fork(), exec() and waitpid().

on a linux documentation site.
thinking how it is implemented in windows....