File Handling in C Language

File Handling in C Language

What is file?

File is a collection of bytes that is stored on secondary storage devices like disk. There are two kinds
of files in a system. They are,

1. Text files (ASCII)

2. Binary files

 Text files contain ASCII codes of digits, alphabetic and symbols.

 Binary file contains collection of bytes (0’s and 1’s). Binary files are compiled version of text
files.

Basic file operations in C programming:

There are 4 basic operations that can be performed on any files in C programming language. They
are,
1. Opening/Creating a file
2. Closing a file
3. Reading a file
4. Writing in a file

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

1 Asst. Prof. P. M. Patil

File Handling in C Language

Opening a File or Creating a File

fopen() function is used to open a file to perform operations such as reading, writing etc. In
a C program, we declare a file pointer and use fopen() as below. fopen() function creates a new file
if the mentioned file name does not exist.FILE *fp;

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

fp=fopen (“filename”, ”mode”);

Where,
fp – file pointer to the data type “FILE”.
filename – the actual file name with full path of the file.
mode – refers to the operation that will be performed on the file. Example: r, w, a, r+, w+ and a+. Please refer
below the description for these mode of operations.

Closing a file

fclose() function closes the file that is being pointed by file pointer fp. In a C program, we close a file
as below.
General Syntax : int fclose(FILE *fp);
fclose (fp);

fprintf()

fprintf() function writes string into a file pointed by fp. In a C program, we write string into a file as
below.
General Syntax : int fprintf(FILE *fp, const char *format, …);

e.g. fprintf (fp, “some data”);

Mode of operations performed on a file

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

2 Asst. Prof. P. M. Patil

File Handling in C Language

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

Input/Output operation on File

// Program to write 5 names in File and read from file and display on screen.

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>

void main()
{
FILE *fp;
char name[30];
int i;
clrscr();

fp=fopen("test.txt","a+");
for(i=0;i<5;i++)
{
printf("\n\t Name :-");
scanf("%s",&name);
fprintf(fp,"%s",name);
fprintf(fp,"\n"," ");
}
fp=fopen("test.txt","r");

while(!feof(fp))
{
fscanf(fp,"%s",name);
printf("\n %s",name);
}
getch();
}
3 Asst. Prof. P. M. Patil
File Handling in C Language

Following program reads a character from user and write in to file one.txt.

# include<stdio.h>
# include<conio.h>
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);
fclose(fp);
}

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

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
struct emp
{
char name[10];
int age;
};

void main()
{
struct emp e;
FILE *p,*q;
4 Asst. Prof. P. M. Patil
File Handling in C Language

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) );
getch();
}

In this program, we have create 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 console usinf standard printf() function.

//Program to copy data from one file to another file

//read data from file one.txt and copy into file one.txt

#include <stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>

void main()
{
FILE *fp1,*fp2;
char name[30];
clrscr();
fp1=fopen("test.txt","r");
fp2=fopen("one.txt","w");
while(!feof(fp1))
{
fscanf(fp1,"%s",name);
fprintf(fp2,"%s",name);
}

:- For o/p open file one.txt in TC

5 Asst. Prof. P. M. Patil