Creating a stream from file descriptor

[Jun]

I posted the below message in the gcc.help in case someone in that
group can help.

Back in gcc 2.x one can create a stream using a file descriptor.  For
example

     fstream *pstr = new fstream (filedesc);

But in the newer gcc 3.x, this does not work anymore and gets an error
since the new fstream does not accept a file descriptor in the
constructor.  Does anyone know if the gcc or the library it's using
needs some special flags to get over this error?  Thanks for any input
that could help.