File Handling in C

File handling in C is the process in which we create, open, read, write, and close operations on a file. C language provides different functions such as fopen(), fwrite(), fread(), fseek(), fprintf(), etc. to perform input, output, and many different C file operations in our program.

Open a File in C

For opening a file in C, the fopen() function is used with the filename or file path along with the required access modes.

The file is not opened.

The file is not opened because it does not exist in the source directory. But the fopen() function is also capable of creating a file if it does not exist.

Note: It is essential to check for NULL values that might be returned by the fopen() function to avoid any errors.

Syntax of fopen()

Parameters

• file_name: name of the file when present in the same directory as the source file. Otherwise, full path.
• access_mode: Specifies for what operation the file is being opened.

Return Value

• If the file is opened successfully, returns a file pointer to it.
• If the file is not opened, then returns NULL.

File Opening Modes

File opening modes or access modes specify the allowed operations on the file to be opened. They are passed as an argument to the fopen() function. Some of the commonly used file access modes are listed below:

As given above, if you want to perform operations on a binary file, then you have to append 'b' at the last. For example, instead of “w”, you have to use “wb”, instead of “a+” you have to use “a+b”.

Create a File

The fopen() function can not only open a file but also can create a file if it does not exist already. For that, we have to use the modes that allow the creation of a file if not found such as w, w+, wb, wb+, a, a+, ab, and ab+.

The file is created Successfully.

Write to a File

The file write operations can be performed by the functions fprintf() and fputs(). C programming also provides some other functions that can be used to write data to a file such as:

The file is now opened.
Data successfully written in file file.txt
The file is now closed.

Reading From a File

The file read operation in C can be performed using functions fscanf() or fgets(). Both the functions performed the same operations as that of scanf() and gets but with an additional parameter, the file pointer. There are also other functions we can use to read from a file. Such functions are listed below:

Output

The file is now opened.
GeeksforGeeks-A Computer Science Portal for Geeks

The getc() and some other file reading functions return EOF (End Of File) when they reach the end of the file while reading. EOF indicates the end of the file, and its value is implementation-defined. Reading more after EOF results in undefined error so, it is always recommended to check for EOF while reading a file.

Note: One thing to note here is that after reading a particular part of the file, the file pointer will be automatically moved to the end of the last read character.

Closing a File

The fclose() function is used to close the file. After successful file operations, you must always close a file to remove it from the memory.

Syntax:

Move File Pointer

File pointer generally points to the position according to the mode or last read/write operation. We can manually move this pointer to any position in the file using fseek() function.

Syntax:

where, pos is the position from where offset is counted and offset is the number of positions to shift from pos (it can be negative or positive).

Example:

While writing to a file opened in rw+ mode, the file pointer moves to the end of the file. In case where we want to replace a word, then first we have to move the file pointer to the position where that word starts.

The file is now opened.
Data successfully written in file file.txt
The file is now closed.

Now, imagine you want to read this file after writing. We can use fseek() here too, but there is one more function specifically for this purpose which is rewind().

Read and Write in a Binary File

Till now, we have only discussed text file operations. The operations on a binary file are similar to text file operations with little difference.

Opening a Binary File

To open a file in binary mode, we use the rb, rb+, ab, ab+, wb, and wb+ access mode in the fopen() function. We also use the .bin file extension in the binary filename.

Example:

Write to a Binary File

We use fwrite() function to write data to a binary file. The data is written to the binary file in the form of bits (0's and 1's).

Syntax of fwrite()

Parameters:

• ptr: pointer to the block of memory to be written.
• size: size of each element to be written (in bytes).
• nmemb: number of elements.
• file_pointer: FILE pointer to the output file stream.

Return Value:

• Number of objects written.

Write Operation Successful

Reading from Binary File

The fread() function can be used to read data from a binary file in C. The data is read from the file in the same form as it is stored i.e. binary form.

Syntax:

Parameters:

• ptr: pointer to the block of memory to read.
• size: the size of each element to read (in bytes).
• nmemb: number of elements.
• file_pointer: FILE pointer to the input file stream.

Return Value:

• Number of objects read.

Output

n1: 1 n2: 5 n3: 6

More Functions for C File Operations

The following table lists some more functions that can be used to perform file operations or assist in performing them.