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CH 2 File Handling

Chapter 2 covers file handling in C, explaining the importance of files for permanent data storage and the issues with console I/O for large data. It details the types of files (text and binary), file opening modes, basic file operations (opening, closing, reading, writing), and introduces various functions for file manipulation. Additionally, it discusses error handling with errno and provides examples of using file I/O functions.

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Hari Kalu
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12 views18 pages

CH 2 File Handling

Chapter 2 covers file handling in C, explaining the importance of files for permanent data storage and the issues with console I/O for large data. It details the types of files (text and binary), file opening modes, basic file operations (opening, closing, reading, writing), and introduces various functions for file manipulation. Additionally, it discusses error handling with errno and provides examples of using file I/O functions.

Uploaded by

Hari Kalu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Ch 2 File Handling

A file is collection of data stored on secondary storage device link hard disk.
• File is created for permanent storage of data. It is readymade structure.
• A file is basically used because real-life application involve large amounts of data and
in such applications the console-oriented I/O operation cause two major problems:
1) It become bulky and time consuming to handle huge amount of data through
terminals.
2) Second, when doing I/o using terminal, the entire data is lost when either the
program is terminated or computer is turned off.
File Opening Mode:-
File can be opened in basic Three mode-
• Read Mode
• Writing Mode
• Appending Mode
Types of Files in C
A file can be classified into two types based on the way the file stores the data. They
are as follows:
Text Files
Binary Files
• 1. Text Files
s of File:-
• A text file contains data in the form of ASCII characters and is generally used to
store a stream of characters.
• Each line in a text file ends with a new line character (‘\n’).
• It can be read or written by any text editor.
• They are generally stored with .txt file extension.
• Text files can also be used to store the source code.
• 2. Binary Files
• A binary file contains data in binary form (i.e. 0’s and 1’s) instead of ASCII
characters. They contain data that is stored in a similar manner to how it is stored
in the main memory.
• The binary files can be created only from within a program and their contents can
only be read by a program.
• More secure as they are not easily readable.
• They are generally stored with .bin file extension.
File Management:- When working on file we need to declare pointer of
type file.
FILE *fptr;

• Basic file operations are:-


• 1) Opening a file 2) Closing a file 3) Reading data from file
4) Writing in a file

1) Opening a file- This operation is performed using fopen() functions


defined in the stdio.h header file. Fopen() is used to create new file
or open existing file.
Syntax: fptr =fopen(“filename”,”mode”);
Example:- fopen(“E:\\cprogram\\new.txt”,”w”);
• 2) 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 of fclose()
fclose(file_pointer);
• fcloseall () -
• function closes all open streams except stdin , stdout ,
stderr (and, in MS-DOS, _stdaux and _stdprn ). It also closes
and deletes any temporary files created by tmpfile . In both
functions, all buffers associated with the stream are flushed
prior to closing.
• 3) Reading a data from file:- To write the file, we must open the filein a mode
that support writing. C provide following set of functions to read data from a
file.
• Fgetc()
• Fgets()
• Fscanf()
• Fread()
• 4) Writing data to file:- Wriritng a program output or some of the variable has
to be saved to a storage location on the file system, the data has to be written
to a file.
• Fputc()
• Fputs()
• Fprintf()
• Fwrite()
Input/output file operation on file:-
• They are broadly classified into-
1)High level files I/O functions
2)Low level files I/O functions
• Unformatted file I/o Functions-
 putw()- putw function is used to write an integer into a file.
Syntax: putw(I,fp); where I is interger value, fp-file pointer
Ex:- int putw(int number, FILE *fp);
 getw()- getw function is used to read an integer into a file.
Syntax: getw(fp); where fp-file pointer
Ex:- int getw(FILE *fp);
write a program to display the value of array using getw() and putw(

#include <stdio.h>
// Open the file in binary read mode
int main() {
file = fopen("temp.dat", "rb");
int array[] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50};
FILE *file; if (file == NULL) {
int i; printf("Could not open file");
// Open a temporary file in binary write mode return 1;
file = fopen("temp.dat", "wb"); }

if (file == NULL) { // Display the elements of the array read from the file
printf("Could not open file"); for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
return 1; printf("%d\n", getw(file));
} }
// Write the elements of the array to the file // Close the file
for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) { fclose(file);
putw(array[i], file);
} return 0;
// Close the file }
fclose(file);
Character oriented Functions-
fputc(),fgetc()
• fputc() is used to write characters to the file
Syntax: Fputc(c,fp);
Where C is a character.
Fp is file pointer.

• fgetc() is used to read characters from the file


Syntax: Fgetc(fp);
Fp is file pointer.
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
FILE *file;
char ch;
// Open the file in write mode
file = fopen("output.txt", "w");
if (file == NULL) {
printf("Could not create file\n");
return 1;
}
// Get characters from the user and write them to the file
printf("Enter characters. Enter '#' to end:\n");
while ((ch = getchar()) != '#') {
fputc(ch, file);
}
// Close the file
fclose(file);
printf("File created successfully.\n");
return 0;
}
• Output:- Hello world
String Oriented function
The fputs() function writes a line of characters into file. It
outputs string to a stream.
Syntax: fputs(buffer,fp);
Where buffer is name of character array. And fp is pointer.
fgets()- used to read a string from a file.
Syntax:- fgets(buffer,siza,fp);
Buffer- name of character array.
Size is an integer.
Fp is pointer.
#include <stdio.h>
int main ()
{
FILE *fp; char str[60];
/* opening file for reading */
fp = fopen("file.txt" , "r");
if(fp == NULL)
{
perror("Error opening file");
return(-1);
}
if( fgets (str, 60, fp)!=NULL )
{
/* writing content to stdout */
puts(str);
}
fclose(fp);
return(0);
}
Let us assume, we have a text file file.txt, which has the following content. This file will be used as an input for our
example program −
We are in 2024.
Formatted file I/O function:-
• Fprintf- used to write multiple data item which may or may not be of
different type to a file
Syntax : fprintf(fp,”control string”, Arguments list);
• Fscanf :-used to read multiple data item which may or may not be of
different type to a file
Syntax : fscanf(fp,”control string”, Arguments list);
• Fwrite:- used to write block of data.
Syntax:- fwrite( buffer_address, size, count, file_operator);
• Fread:- used to read bytes from file.
Syntax:- fwrite( buffer_address, size, count, file_operator);
What is errno:- whenever a function call is made in c language a
variable named errno is associated with it.
-it is a global variable which can be used to identify which type of error
encountered while function execution. Based on its value.
Library function for error handling:-
1) feof()
The feof() function is used to check whether end-of-file indicator is set for a file steam.
Syntax
int feof(FILE *file_pointer);

Parameters
File_pointer: It is the pointer that points to the FILE for which we want to check the error.
Return Value
It returns a non-zero value if an error occurred, otherwise, it returns 0.
2) feof()
The feof() function is used to check whether end-of-file indicator is set for a file steam.

Syntax

int feof(FILE *stream);


Parameters

stream: It is the pointer that points to the FILE for which we want to check the error.
Return Value

It returns a non-zero value if an error occurred, otherwise, it returns 0.

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