File Handling in C

File Input/Output : C files I/O functions handle data on a secondary storage device, such as a hard disk.

C can handle files as Stream-oriented data (Text) files, and System oriented data (Binary) file.

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.

Function	Description
fopen()	create a new file or open a existing file
fclose()	closes a file
getc()	reads a character from a file
putc()	writes a character to a file
fscanf()	reads a set of data from a file
fprintf()	writes a set of data to a file
getw()	reads a integer from a file
putw()	writes a integer to a file
fseek()	set the position to desire point
ftell()	gives current position in the file
rewind()	set the position to the beginning point

C File Operations : Five major operations can be performed on file are:  

1. Creation of a new file. 
2. Opening an existing file. 
3. Reading data from a file. 
4. Writing data in a file.
5. Closing a file.

Opening a File or Creating a File 

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.

Mode	Description
r	opens a text file in reading mode
w	opens or create a text file in writing mode.
a	opens a text file in append mode
r+	opens a text file in both reading and writing mode
w+	opens a text file in both reading and writing mode
a+	opens a text file in both reading and writing mode
rb	opens a binary file in reading mode
wb	opens or create a binary file in writing mode
ab	opens a binary file in append mode
rb+	opens a binary file in both reading and writing mode
wb+	opens a binary file in both reading and writing mode
ab+	opens a binary file in both reading and writing mode

Closing a File

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

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

Example:

#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()

Example:

#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 referring 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.

Reading and Writing in a Binary File : 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.

Syntax: 

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

Example:

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.