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Unit 10 File Handling

The document provides an overview of file handling in programming, explaining the importance of files for data storage and retrieval. It details the types of files (text and binary), common file operations, and functions used for file handling in C, such as fopen(), fclose(), and various read/write functions. Additionally, it describes how to open files in different modes and the necessity of closing files after operations to prevent data loss.

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Prathmesh Jadhav
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3 views

Unit 10 File Handling

The document provides an overview of file handling in programming, explaining the importance of files for data storage and retrieval. It details the types of files (text and binary), common file operations, and functions used for file handling in C, such as fopen(), fclose(), and various read/write functions. Additionally, it describes how to open files in different modes and the necessity of closing files after operations to prevent data loss.

Uploaded by

Prathmesh Jadhav
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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File Handling

Introduction to files: File Handling


• A collection of data which is stored on a secondary device like a hard disk is known as a file.
• A file is generally used as real-life applications that contain a large amount of data.
• Why files are needed?
• When a program is terminated, the entire data is lost. Storing in a file will preserve your data even if the
program terminates.
• If you have to enter a large number of data, it will take a lot of time to enter them all.
However, if you have a file containing all the data, you can easily access the contents of the file using a
few commands in C.
• You can easily move your data from one computer to another without any changes.
Types of Files
1. Text files
2. Binary files

1. Text files
• Text files are the normal .txt files. You can easily create text files using any simple text editors such as
Notepad.
• When you open those files, you'll see all the contents within the file as plain text. You can easily edit or
delete the contents.
• They take minimum effort to maintain, are easily readable, and provide the least security and takes
bigger storage space.
Binary files

2. Binary files
• Binary files are mostly the .bin files in your computer.
• Instead of storing data in plain text, they store it in the binary form (0's and 1's).
• They can hold a higher amount of data, are not readable easily, and provides better
security than text files.
File Operations

1. Creating a new file


2. Opening an existing file
3. Reading data from file
4. Writing data to a file
5. Closing a file
Functions for file handling
No. Function Description
1 fopen( ) opens new or existing file
2 fprintf( ) write data into the file
3 fscanf( ) reads data from the file
4 fputc( ) writes a character into the file
5 fgetc( ) reads a character from file
6 fclose( ) closes the file
7 fseek( ) sets the file pointer to given position
8 fputw( ) writes an integer to file
9 fgetw( ) reads an integer from file
10 ftell( ) returns current position
11 rewind( ) sets the file pointer to the beginning of the file
Opening File: fopen()
• We must open a file before it can be read, write, or update. The fopen() function is used to
open a file.
FILE *fopen( const char * filename, const char * mode );
• The fopen function works in the following way.
• Firstly, It searches the file to be opened.
• Then, it loads the file from the disk and place it into the buffer. The buffer is used to
provide efficiency for the read operations.
• It sets up a character pointer which points to the first character of the file.
FILE *filePointer;
filePointer = fopen(“fileName.txt”, “w”);
We can use one of the following modes in the fopen() function.
Mode Description
r opens a text file in read mode
w opens a text file in write mode
a opens a text file in append mode
r+ opens a text file in read and write mode
w+ opens a text file in read and write mode
a+ opens a text file in read and write mode
rb opens a binary file in read mode
wb opens a binary file in write mode
ab opens a binary file in append mode
rb+ opens a binary file in read and write mode
wb+ opens a binary file in read and write mode
ab+ opens a binary file in read and write mode
Closing a file

• One should always close a file whenever the operations on file are over. It
means the contents and links to the file are terminated. This prevents
accidental damage to the file.

FILE *fp;
fclose (file_pointer); fp = fopen ("data.txt", “w”);
fclose (fp);
Writing data to a file

• In C, when you write to a file, newline characters '\n' must be explicitly added.
• fputc(char, file_pointer):
It writes a character to the file pointed to by file_pointer.
• fputs(str, file_pointer):
It writes a string to the file pointed to by file_pointer.
• fprintf(file_pointer, str, variable_lists):
It prints a string to the file pointed to by file_pointer. The string can optionally include format
specifiers and a list of variables variable_lists.
Reading data from file
• We can read content of a file in c using the fscanf() and fgets() and fgetc() functions. All are used
to read contents of a file.
• fgetc(file_pointer):
It returns the next character from the file pointed to by the file pointer. When the end of the file
has been reached, the EOF is sent back.
• fgets(buffer, n, file_pointer):
It reads n-1 characters from the file and stores the string in a buffer in which the NULL
character '\0' is appended as the last character.
• fscanf(file_pointer, conversion_specifiers, variable_adresses):
It is used to parse and analyze data. It reads characters from the file and assigns the input to a list
of variable pointers variable_adresses using conversion specifiers. with scanf, fscanf stops
reading a string when space or newline is encountered.

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