Unable to identify behaviour of execl() function call - c

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;
}

Answer 2

If you want your code to return, you should fork a child process to run the command. This way you can check the return code.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#define CURL "/usr/bin/curl"
int main()
{
pid_t pid;
int status;
pid = fork();
if (pid == 0)
{
execl(CURL, CURL, arg1, NULL);
}
else if (pid < 0)
{
printf("Fork failed\n");
exit (1);
}
else
{
if (waitpid(pid, &status, 0) != pid)
status = -1;
}
return status;
}
arg1 is whatever argument you want to use with curl or if you aren't using any than you obviously can omit it.