C socket programming errors - c

Question

It's been an hour since I started looking for THE error. I just started C sockets. The program exits with code -1 after printing "Error 1 connection error". The server in online, it's a netcat server. Where did I messed up ?
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <string.h>
#define HOST "127.0.0.1"
#define PORT 4444
int main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
struct sockaddr_in addr;
int sock = 0;
int ret;
struct sockaddr_in server_addr;
char *msg = "Hello world !\n";
char inBuffer[1024] = { 0 };
if (sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP) < 0)
{
printf("Error %d socket creating.\n", sock);
exit(-1);
}
else
{
memset(&server_addr, '0', sizeof(server_addr));
server_addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
server_addr.sin_port = htons(PORT);
if (ret = inet_pton(AF_INET, HOST, &server_addr.sin_addr) <= 0)
{
printf("Error %d unsuported address: %d\n", ret);
exit(-2);
}
else
{
if (ret = connect(sock, (struct sockaddr *)&server_addr, sizeof(server_addr)) < 0)
{
printf("Error %d connection error\n", ret);
exit(-3);
}
else
{
send(sock, msg, strlen(msg), 0);
read(sock, inBuffer, 1024);
printf("%s\n", inBuffer);
return 0;
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

Due to operator precedence, the expression
sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP) < 0
is actually equal to
sock = (socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP) < 0)
That is, you assign the result of the comparison socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP) < 0 to the variable sock. The result of that comparison will always be either 0 (for false) or 1 (for true). Neither 0 nor 1 should be a valid socket.
You need to explicitly add parentheses for the assignment:
(sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP)) < 0
The same needs to be done for the connect call and the comparison there.