[QUESTION] echo system >> buffer ?

I'm building a C++ at the moment that needs to forward a few dos operations (netstat and pinging) But I need to read them into a buffer, and I don't want to do it the long way:

C:\someuser\somedir: netstat >> filebuffer.txt

and then read from it, please tell me there's a faster way of doing this!
Like doing something like this:

char buffer[1000];

system("netstat >> ", buffer);

Anyone?