Reading scientific notation as a float

[wasabi]

I know how to display values in scientific notation (printf("%e",a); or cout << scientific << a), but how do you it the other way around?

If you receive a value that you know is in scientific notation, how can you transform it into... normal notation?

I'm looking for a single command, if such a thing exists. I know a way of doing it by taking it as a string and mutilating it with substrings and pow()'s, but I would much prefer to avoid that if at all possible.

[jRaskell]

stringstreams can handle scientific notation.

[wasabi]

Unfortunately, I'm using C-strings in this program. Sorry if my use of 'substrings' (not to mention the word 'string') was misleading.

[Bazzy]

scanf can do that

[wasabi]

I feel like quite a fool right now.