c++ socket connect error - c++

Question

SOCKET s;
s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
SOCKADDR_IN sin;
sin.sin_family = AF_INET;
sin.sin_port = htons(80);
sin.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(gethostbyname("www.steamcommunity.com") -> h_addr_list[0]);
cout << gethostbyname("www.steamcommunity.com") -> h_addr_list[0]; /* this prints "?ф▀gwww.steamcommunity.com" in cmd */
if(SOCKET_ERROR == connect(s, (sockaddr *)&sin, sizeof(sockaddr))){
cout << "\nconnect = SOCKET_ERROR "; /* error and exit the function */
return;
}
Whats wrong here? I add some more details to to to otto to.

Answer 1

Two problems:
You're asserting that sin contains an AF_INET address, but then not checking whether gethostbyname() have given you an AF_INET address
gethostbyname() gives you a binary address. inet_addr() takes a textual address ("1.2.3.4") and converts it into a binary address. You need something like:
sin.sin_addr = *(in_addr *) gethostbyname("www.steamcommunity.com")->h_addr_list[0];
(The use of char * as the type of *h_addr_list is just C's way of saying "it's a bunch of bytes", rather than any sort of readable string.)
However:
Please use getaddrinfo() instead of gethostbyname(). MSDN says: "The gethostbyname function has been deprecated by the introduction of the getaddrinfo function. Developers creating Windows Sockets 2 applications are urged to use the getaddrinfo function instead of gethostbyname" (for all sorts of reasons).
You can't assume that your DNS (or whatever) lookup will return exactly on AF_INET address. It can return any number of any sort of address - that's one reason why getaddrinfo() exists.
Please check return values:
socket() can fail.
gethostbyname() can return NULL: you need to check this before dereferencing the return value as a struct hostent *.