File Input/Output in C

A file represents a sequence of bytes on the disk where a group of related data is stored. File is created for permanent storage of data. It is a ready made structure.

In C language, we use a structure pointer of file type to declare a file.

FILE *fp;

C provides a number of functions that helps to perform basic file operations. Following are the functions,

Opening a File or Creating a File in C

The fopen() function is used to create a new file or to open an existing file.

General Syntax:

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

Here, *fp is the FILE pointer (FILE *fp), which will hold the reference to the opened(or created) file.

filename is the name of the file to be opened and mode specifies the purpose of opening the file. Mode can be of following types,

Closing a File in C

The fclose() function is used to close an already opened file.

General Syntax :

int fclose( FILE *fp);

Here fclose() function closes the file and returns zero on success, or EOF if there is an error in closing the file. This EOF is a constant defined in the header file stdio.h.

Input/Output operation on File in C

In the above table we have discussed about various file I/O functions to perform reading and writing on file. getc() and putc() are the simplest functions which can be used to read and write individual characters to a file.

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    FILE *fp;
    char ch;
    fp = fopen("one.txt", "w");
    printf("Enter data...");
    while( (ch = getchar()) != EOF) {
        putc(ch, fp);
    }
    fclose(fp);
    fp = fopen("one.txt", "r");
 
    while( (ch = getc(fp)! = EOF)
    printf("%c",ch);
    
    // closing the file pointer
    fclose(fp);
    
    return 0;
}

Reading and Writing to File using fprintf() and fscanf()

#include<stdio.h>

struct emp
{
    char name[10];
    int age;
};

void main()
{
    struct emp e;
    FILE *p,*q;
    p = fopen("one.txt", "a");
    q = fopen("one.txt", "r");
    printf("Enter Name and Age:");
    scanf("%s %d", e.name, &e.age);
    fprintf(p,"%s %d", e.name, e.age);
    fclose(p);
    do
    {
        fscanf(q,"%s %d", e.name, e.age);
        printf("%s %d", e.name, e.age);
    }
    while(!feof(q));
}

In this program, we have created two FILE pointers and both are refering to the same file but in different modes.

fprintf() function directly writes into the file, while fscanf() reads from the file, which can then be printed on the console using standard printf() function.

Difference between Append and Write Mode in C

Write (w) mode and Append (a) mode, while opening a file are almost the same. Both are used to write in a file. In both the modes, new file is created if it doesn't exists already.

The only difference they have is, when you open a file in the write mode, the file is reset, resulting in deletion of any data already present in the file. While in append mode this will not happen. Append mode is used to append or add data to the existing data of file(if any). Hence, when you open a file in Append(a) mode, the cursor is positioned at the end of the present data in the file.

Reading and Writing in a Binary File in C

A Binary file is similar to a text file, but it contains only large numerical data. The Opening modes are mentioned in the table for opening modes above.

fread() and fwrite() functions are used to read and write is a binary file.

fwrite(data-element-to-be-written, size_of_elements, number_of_elements, pointer-to-file);

fread() is also used in the same way, with the same arguments like fwrite() function. Below mentioned is a simple example of writing into a binary file

const char *mytext = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";   
FILE *bfp= fopen("test.txt", "wb");   
if (bfp) 
{     
    fwrite(mytext, sizeof(char), strlen(mytext), bfp);     
    fclose(bfp);   
}

fseek(), ftell() and rewind() functions

• fseek(): It is used to move the reading control to different positions using fseek function.
• ftell(): It tells the byte location of current position of cursor in file pointer.
• rewind(): It moves the control to beginning of the file.

Some File Handling Program Examples

• List all the Files present in a Directory
• Read Content of a File and Display it on screen
• Finding Size of a File
• Create a File and store Information in it
• Reverse the Content of File and Print it
• Copy Content of one File into Another File