Module 13 – part 2 – File Handling

BITS Pilani Dr. Amitesh Singh Rajput

Pilani Campus
Department of Computer Science & Information Systems
Module Overview

• File and File Handling

• File Handling with Command Line Arguments

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
File
• Applications require information to be read from or written to
memory device which can be accomplished using files.

• All files are administered by the operating system which

allocates and deallocates disk blocks.

• The operating system also controls the transfer of data between

programs and the files they access.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
File handling Basics
• A file has to opened before data can be read from or written to it.

• When a file is opened, the operating system associates a stream

with the file.

• A common buffer and a file position indicator are maintained in

the memory for a function to know how much of the file has
already been read.

• The stream is disconnected when the file is closed.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
fopen: Opening a File
• FILE *fp; Defines file pointer
• fp = fopen(“foo.txt”, “r”); Only reading permitted

• If the call is successful, fopen returns a pointer to a structure

typedef’d to FILE.

• The pointer variable, fp, assigned by fopen acts as a file handle

which will be used subsequently by all functions that access the file.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
File Opening Modes
• r – Reading a file
• w – Writing a file
• a – Appending to the end of an existing file

When used with “w” or “a”, fopen creates a file if it does not
find one.

fopen will fail if the file does not have the necessary permissions
(r, w and a) or if the file does not exist in case of “r”.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
File Opening Modes: Extended
• Database applications often need both read and write access
for the same file, in which case, you must consider using the
“r+”, “w+” and “a+” modes.
Mode File opened for
r Reading only
r+ Both reading and writing
w Writing only
w+ Both reading and writing
a Appending only
a+ Reading entire file but only appending permitted

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
File Read/Write Functions
The standard library offers a number of functions for performing
read/write operations on files.

1. Character-oriented functions (fgetc and fputc)

2. Line-oriented functions (fgets and fputs)
3. Formatted functions (fscanf and fprintf)

All of these functions are found in the standard library stdio.h.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
fclose: Closing a file
• Operating systems have a limit on the number of files that can
be opened by a program.

• Files must be closed with the fclose function:

• fclose(fp);

• Closing a file frees the file pointer and associated buffers.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Example 1
int main(){
FILE *fp; char buf1[80], buf2[80];
fputs("Enter a line of text: \n", stdout);
fgets(buf1, 80, stdin);
fp = fopen("foo", "w"); if (fp == NULL){
fputs(buf1, fp); fputs(“Error”, stdout);
return 0;
fclose(fp); }
fp = fopen("foo", "r");
fgets(buf2, 80, fp);
fputs(buf2, stdout);
fclose(fp);
return 0;
}
Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
OUTPUT

Enter a line of text: fgets(buf1, 80, stdin);

Hello! This is file handling.
fp = fopen("foo", "w");

fputs(buf1, fp);

fputs(buf2, stdout);

Hello! This is file handling.

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Program to manipulate the file
order offset pointer
int main(){
FILE *fp; int c, x;
char buf[80] = "A1234 abcd"; char stg[80];
fp = fopen("foo", "w+");
fputs(buf, fp);
rewind(fp);
c = fgetc(fp);
fputc(c, stdout);
printf(“\n”);
fscanf(fp, "%d", &x);
fprintf(stdout, "%d", x);
printf(“\n”);
fgets(stg, 4, fp); A
fputs(stg, stdout); 1234
return 0; ab
}
Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Program to read text from terminal, save
it in a file and then reading again
int main(){
FILE *fp; char buf[80];
fp = fopen("foo", "w+");
fputs("Enter a few lines, [Ctrl-d] to exit\n",stdout);
while(fgets(buf, 80, stdin)!= NULL)
fputs(buf, fp);
rewind(fp);
fputs("Reading from foo... \n", stdout);
while(fgets(buf, 80, fp)!= NULL)
fputs(buf, stdout);
return 0;
}

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
OUTPUT

Enter a few lines, [Ctrl-d] to exit

Line One
Line Two
Line Three

Reading from foo...

Line One
Line Two
Line Three

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Practice problems
• Write a C program which prints itself! [Hint: use file handling]

• Extend the above to program such that comments are not

printed. For simplicity, consider single line comments beginning
with //

• Given a file f1, write a program to create a new file f2 which

contains the contents of f1 double-spaced (i.e., each space
replaced by two spaces, each new line by two new lines, and
each tab (\t) by two tabs. Rest of the content remains
unchanged).

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Example of File Handling with Command

Line Arguments
Command Line Arguments
• Values can be passed from command line when the C programs
are executed.

• To handle command line arguments, main() function is modified

as:

• int main(int argc, char *argv[])

• argc – number of arguments passed
• argv[] – is a pointer array to the arguments passed

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Example 1:
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
printf(“Number of arguments: %d \n", argc);
int i = 0;
while(i < argc){
printf("Argument %d: %s \n",i, argv[i]);
i++;
} gcc test.c
./a.out one two three
return 0;
Number of arguments: 4
}
Argument 0: ./a.out
Argument 1: one
Argument 2: two
Argument 3: three

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Example 2: To display the
content of one file
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
FILE *fp; char ch;
fp = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if (fp == NULL){
printf("Error");
return(0);
}
ch = fgetc(fp);
while (ch != EOF){
printf("%c", ch);
ch = fgetc(fp);
}
fclose(fp);
}
Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Example 3: To display the
content of more than one file
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
int nof = argc-1;
while (nof > 0){
FILE *fp; char ch;
fp = fopen(argv[nof],"r");
ch = fgetc(fp);
while (ch != EOF){
printf ("%c", ch);
ch = fgetc(fp);}
nof--;
fclose (argv[nof]);}
}

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus