Question

Is it possible to communicate with server via raw file IO functions like fprintf() and fscanf()?

E.g. this code won’t work afaik:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    FILE* f = fopen("http://example.com/", "r");

    while (!feof(f))
    {
        char *s = new char[255];
        fscanf(f, "%s", s);
        printf("%s\n", s);
        delete[] s;
    }

    fclose(f);

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

No, this won’t work, that’s not what stdio is for. But I tell you what you can do:

• Use libcurl
• Use asio
• Use your own sockets

I don’t know about win32, but on Unix you could:

• Get a socket to that host using connect(2)
• Use fdopen(3) to associate it with a FILE *

Also, those functions aren’t “raw” at all; there’s quite a lot going on before the really raw stuff is called (the system calls).