Question

I was working on my project when I needed to use “curl” to obtain some data from www. Now firstly I tried direct system() function but it didn’t worked, strangely everytime it corrupted the whole source code file while compiling with gcc. Luckily I was testing it separately.
Then I tested execl() function, this code compiles OK and gcc gives me a .exe file to run, but nothing happens when I run it,blank windows appears. CODE:

    int main(){
        execl("curl","curl","http://livechat.rediff.com/sports/score/score.txt",">blahblah.txt",NULL);
         getch();
    return 0;
    }

Includes are not shown properly but I have included stdio,conio,stdlib and unistd.h.
How can I get output of program to store in text file? Also running the above command creates and stores text file in My Documents, I want it to be in local directory from where I run the program. How can I do that?

Answer 1

You need to provide the path of curl, and you cannot use redirection because the application will not be executed through bash. Instead use the -o flag and specify the filename. Also, execl does not return when successful:

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
  execl("/usr/bin/curl",
        "curl","http://livechat.rediff.com/sports/score/score.txt",
        "-oblahblah.txt",NULL
  );
  printf("error\n");
  return 0;
}