Reading popen results in C++

I am writing a C++ application and I need to read the result of a system command.

I am using popen() more or less as shown here:

    const int MAX_BUFFER = 2048;
    string cmd="ls -l";
    char buffer[MAX_BUFFER];
    FILE *stream = popen(cmd.c_str(), "r");
    if (stream){
       while (!feof(stream))
       {
            if (fgets(buffer, MAX_BUFFER, stream) != NULL)
            {
               //here is all my code
            }
       }
       pclose(stream);
    }

I've been trying to re-write this in a different way. I saw some non-standard solutions like:

FILE *myfile;
std::fstream fileStream(myfile);
std::string mystring;
while(std::getline(myfile,mystring))
{
    // .... Here I do what I need
}

My compiler does not accept this though.

How can I read from popen in C++?