C Files

There is plenty of function in C language to handle file Input/Output(I/O)  operations. Here in this article, you will learn to handle I/O operations in C by the use of different functions.

In C programming, a file is a place where we will store the permanent data. A file represents a sequence of bytes which stores a group of related data. The file is a ready-made structure.

Why do we need files?

The following points will explain precisely why we need files for our program.

• When we store our data in the file, the file will preserve our data even if the program terminates.
• With the help of files, we can move our data from one computer to another without any changes.
• In the case of large data, it will take a lot of time to enter them all. However, if you have stored all the data in the file then accessing the contents of the file will be easy using a few commands.

How can we declare files?

While working with files, you have to declare a pointer of file type. This declaration enables communication between the file and the program.

FILE *file_pointer

What are the different functions for file handling?

C Language provides varieties of functions that help in performing basic file operations. All the functions for file handling along with their description are given below.

How to open a file?

For opening a file, we will use the function fopen() that will fall under the header file “<stdio.h>”.  We must always open a file before we perform operations like read, write or update on it. The fopen() function is used for opening a file. Below is the syntax of fopen().

Syntax:

Opening Modes in Standard I/O

How can we close a file?

The file, whether it may be binary or text must be closed after performing all the operations on it. The function fclose() will close the file which is already opened. See the following syntax which is used for performing fclose() operation.

Syntax:

The function ‘fclose()’ will close the file and returns zero when the operation is successful. Otherwise, the function will return EOF, which is a constant defined within the header file ‘stdio.h’.

How can we read and write to the text file?

We will use the function fprintf() and fscanf() for reading and writing to the text file. These functions are same as the printf() and scanf() functions. The only difference that exists between them is that the ‘fprintf()’ and ‘fscanf()’ will expect the pointer to the structure file. They are used for reading and writing to a text file.

Now see the following examples implementing fscanf() and fprintf() functions.

Writing on a file using fprintf() function

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
   int num;
   FILE *file_pointer;
   file_pointer = fopen("C:\\file.txt","w");

   if(file_pointer == NULL)
   {
      printf("Error incurred!");   
      exit(1);             
   }

   
   fprintf(file_pointer, "Hello! this is my  file by using fprintf...\n");//writing data on the file 
   fclose(file_pointer);//closing the file  

   return 0;
}

The program writes the string that we pass into the file “file.txt”. The fprintf() function will write the set of characters to the file. After compiling and executing this program, you will see a text file ‘file.txt’ which will be created in C drive of your computer. When you open the file named ‘file.txt’ in your C drive you will see the same text that you have written in your program.

Reading a text file using fscanf() function

We will use the fscanf() function for the reading of a set of characters from the file. This function will read a word from the file and returns EOF at the end of the file.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
   char buffer[300];
   FILE *file_pointer;

   if ((file_pointer = fopen("C:\\file.txt","r")) == NULL){
       printf("Error! incurred while opening file");

       // Program will exit if the file pointer returns NULL.
       exit(1);
   }

   fscanf(file_pointer,"%s", &buffer);
   printf("The value inside the file is: ");
   printf("%s", buffer);
   fclose(file_pointer); 
  
   return 0;
}

In the above program, as the file ‘file.txt’ is opened in the read mode. So the program will at first read the string present inside the file ‘file.txt’. If the first program of writing inside the file is executed properly then the contents written inside at first will be displayed. When the program is executed,it displays the output as below.

Output: