File Handling

CHAPTER 7
FILE HANDLING
This chapter explains how C programmers can create, open and close text or binary files
for their data storage.A file represents a sequence of bytes, does not matter if it is a text
file or binary file.
OPENING FILES
You can use the fopen( ) function to create a new file or to open an existing file, this call
will initialize an object of the type FILE, which contains all the information necessary to
control the stream. Following is the prototype of this function call:
FILE *fopen( const char * filename, const char * mode );
Here, filename is string literal, which you will use to name your file and access mode
can have one of the following values:
Mode Description
r Opens an existing text file for reading purpose.
Opens a text file for writing, if it does not exist then a new file is created. Here
w
your program will start writing content from the beginning of the file.
Opens a text file for writing in appending mode, if it does not exist then a new file
a is created. Here your program will start appending content in the existing file
content.
r+ Opens a text file for reading and writing both.
Opens a text file for reading and writing both. It first truncate the file to zero
w+
length if it exists otherwise create the file if it does not exist.
Opens a text file for reading and writing both. It creates the file if it does not exist.
a+
The reading will start from the beginning but writing can only be appended.
If you are going to handle binary files then you will use below mentioned access modes
instead of the above mentioned:
"rb", "wb", "ab", "ab+", "a+b", "wb+", "w+b", "ab+", "a+b"
CLOSING A FILE
To close a file, use the fclose( ) function. The prototype of this function is:
int fclose( FILE *fp );
77
The fclose( ) function returns zero on success, or EOF if there is an error in closing the
file. This function actually, flushes any data still pending in the buffer to the file, closes
the file, and releases any memory used for the file. The EOF is a constant defined in the
header file stdio.h.
There are various functions provide by C standard library to read and write a file
character by character or in the form of a fixed length string. Let us see few of the in the
next section.
WRITING A FILE
Following is the simplest function to write individual characters to a stream:
int fputc( int c, FILE *fp );
The function fputc() writes the character value of the argument c to the output stream
referenced by fp. It returns the written character written on success otherwise EOF if
there is an error. You can use the following functions to write a null-terminated string to
a stream:
int fputs( const char *s, FILE *fp );
The function fputs() writes the string s to the output stream referenced by fp. It returns a
non-negative value on success, otherwise EOF is returned in case of any error. You can
use int fprintf(FILE *fp,const char *format, ...) function as well to write a string into a
file. Try the following example:
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen("/tmp/test.txt", "w+");
fprintf(fp, "This is testing for fprintf...\n");
fputs("This is testing for fputs...\n", fp);
fclose(fp);
}
When the above code is compiled and executed, it creates a new file test.txt in /tmp
directory and writes two lines using two different functions. Let us read this file in next
section.
READING A FILE
Following is the simplest function to read a single character from a file:
int fgetc( FILE * fp );
78
The fgetc() function reads a character from the input file referenced by fp. The return
value is the character read, or in case of any error it returns EOF. The following
functions allow you to read a string from a stream:
char *fgets( char *buf, int n, FILE *fp );
The functions fgets() reads up to n - 1 characters from the input stream referenced by fp.
It copies the read string into the buffer buf, appending a null character to terminate the
string.
If this function encounters a newline character '\n' or the end of the file EOF before they
have read the maximum number of characters, then it returns only the characters read up
to that point including new line character. You can also use int fscanf(FILE *fp, const
char *format, ...) function to read strings from a file but it stops reading after the first
space character encounters.
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
FILE *fp;
char buff[255];
fp = fopen("/tmp/test.txt", "r");
fscanf(fp, "%s", buff);
printf("1 : %s\n", buff );
fgets(buff, 255, (FILE*)fp);

printf("2: %s\n", buff );
fgets(buff, 255, (FILE*)fp);

printf("3: %s\n", buff );
fclose(fp);
When the above code is compiled and executed, it reads the file created in previous
section and produces the following result:
1 : This
2: is testing for fprintf...
3: This is testing for fputs...
Let's see a little more detail about what happened here. First fscanf() method read just
This because after that it encountered a space, second call is for fgets() which read the
remaining line till it encountered end of line. Finally last call fgets() read second line
completely.
BINARY I/O FUNCTIONS
79

File Handling

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

File Handling

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

File Handling

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CHAPTER 7

FILE fopen( const char filename, const char * mode );

"rb", "wb", "ab", "ab+", "a+b", "wb+", "w+b", "ab+", "a+b"

int fclose( FILE *fp );

int fputc( int c, FILE *fp );

int fputs( const char s, FILE fp );

int fgetc( FILE * fp );

char fgets( char buf, int n, FILE *fp );

fgets(buff, 255, (FILE*)fp);

fgets(buff, 255, (FILE*)fp);

3: This is testing for fputs...

BINARY I/O FUNCTIONS

You might also like