Get IP address of an interface on Linux

Try this:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h> /* for strncpy */

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <net/if.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>

int
main()
{
 int fd;
 struct ifreq ifr;

 fd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);

 /* I want to get an IPv4 IP address */
 ifr.ifr_addr.sa_family = AF_INET;

 /* I want IP address attached to "eth0" */
 strncpy(ifr.ifr_name, "eth0", IFNAMSIZ-1);

 ioctl(fd, SIOCGIFADDR, &ifr);

 close(fd);

 /* display result */
 printf("%s\n", inet_ntoa(((struct sockaddr_in *)&ifr.ifr_addr)->sin_addr));

 return 0;
}

The code sample is taken from here.

In addition to the ioctl() method Filip demonstrated you can use getifaddrs(). There is an example program at the bottom of the man page.