File Handling in C
This article deals with File Handling in C and will answer your query regarding is its usage.This concept is cleared with programming example in C.
Introduction
In programming, we might need a specific type of input data to be created multiple times. Sometimes more than just displaying some facts over the console is required. The quantity of data that can be displayed on the console may be extremely small or very vast. Because the memory is volatile, repeatedly restoring the programmatically generated data is hard. However, the user can store data on the local system, as it is accessible whenever he needs to. Here, file handling in C becomes necessary.
Table of contents
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File Handling in C
Data storage in a file using a program is known as file handling. Programs are written in C using file handling for storing the results and other program data in files. To use the data in the application, we may also extract or fetch it from a file.
We can use our C application to update, create, read, and delete files that are stored on the local file system thanks to file handling in C. A file can undergo the following procedures:
- Creation of a new file
- Opening an existing file
- Reading from the file
- Writing to the file
- Deleting the file
Why file handling in C
There are occasions when a program’s output, after it has been compiled and run, does not meet our objectives. In these circumstances, the user would want to verify the program’s output several times. It takes a lot of work for any programmer to compile and run the same program repeatedly. This is the precise situation where file handling is helpful.
- Reusability: The process of File handling helps the user by allowing him to preserve all the information or the data that is generated after he runs the designed program.
- Saves Time: In some cases, the programs need a large amount of user input. Here, file handling allows the user to access part of the code using individual commands easily.
- Commendable storing capacity: While storing data in the files, the user can leave behind the stress of storing information in bulk in the program.
- Portability: The availability of contents in any file is easily transferable to another without any hassle and data loss in the system. Hence, saving a lot of time and effort along with minimizing the risk of flawed coding.
Also explore: Top 80+ C Programming Interview Questions and Answers
File Handling Function in C
A file can be easily opened, expanded upon, read, created, deleted, closed, searched for, etc., via some different functions.
In C, we can refer to these as file-handling operators.
fopen()
Opens a file
fprint()
Prints an available file
fscan()
Reads the data present in the file
fputc()
Writes a character to the file
fgetc()
Reads the character to the file
fseek()
Sets the pointer to the intended file position
fclose()
Closes a program file
fputw()
Writes an integer from the file
fgetw()
Reads an integer from the file
ftell()
Tells the current position of the file
We use a straightforward text editor to create the text files with the.txt extension. The binary files contain the data and information using the 1s and 0s binary coding scheme. The disadvantage of text files in a program is fixed by creating binary files, which have the extension.bin.
fopen()
Before a file may be read, written to, or updated, the user must open it. A file is opened using the fopen() method. Below is the syntax for fopen() function.
File = fopen(“Name_of_file”,”mode)
There are a few file-opening modes present in the C language. Let us have a look at them below:
r
Will open a text file (read mode only)
w
Will open a text file (write mode only)
a
Will open a text file (append mode only)
r+
Will open a text file (both read and write modes)
w+
Will open a text file (both read and write modes)
rb
Will open a binary file (read mode only)
wb
Will open a binary file (write mode only)
ab
Will open a binary file (append mode only)
rb+
Will open a binary file (both read and write modes)
wb+
Will open a binary file (both read and write modes)
ab+
Will open a binary file (both read and write modes)
fClose() – Closing a file
Once a program has finished writing or reading a file, it must be closed (for both text and binary files). The fclose() method in a program is used to close a file.
The program seems to be like this:
fclose(fptr);
The file pointer needed to close this file in a program is referred to as the fptr in this situation.
fscan(), fprint() : Reading the data into file
The two functions fscanf() and fprintf() functions are used to write and read data into the text file, respectively. These are the file equivalents of the scanf() and printf() functions. However, there is a significant distinction: fscanf() and fprintf() require a reference pointing to the program’s structure FILE.
Let us see the program below and see how file handling works in C:
C program to Open a File
// C program to Open a File,// Write in it, And Close the File
# include <stdio.h># include <string.h>
int main( ){ FILE *file ; char dataToBeWritten[50] = "NaukriInfo - Giving best experience to its learners";
file = fopen("ABC.c", "w") ; if ( file == NULL ) { printf( "The ABC.c file failed to open." ) ; } else { printf("The file is open\n") ; if ( strlen ( dataToBeWritten ) > 0 ) { fputs(dataToBeWritten, file) ; fputs("\n", file) ; } fclose(file) ; printf("The data is successfully written"); printf("The file is close") ; } return 0; }
The output of the program will be:
The ABC.c file failed to open.
In this program, we have created a file pointer as a file, and the data is then fetched to be written into the file. Then we open the existing file ABC.c using fopen() in the write mode using the ‘w’ attribute. We will check if the file is empty by using file ==NULL, which may also mean that the file is not existing. We will insert the data into the file using fputs() function, and in the end, we will close the file using fclose() function.
Conclusion
In this article, we have talked about file handling using the C language. Data storage in a file using a program is known as file handling. To use the data in the application, we may also extract or fetch it from a file.
We can use file handling in C to update, create, read, and delete files stored on the local system. File handling can undergo the creation of a file, opening, reading, and writing as well as closing a file. We have discussed the need for file handling in C and a demonstration of how to execute the functions in C using file handling.
Contributed by-Megha Chadha
This is a collection of insightful articles from domain experts in the fields of Cloud Computing, DevOps, AWS, Data Science, Machine Learning, AI, and Natural Language Processing. The range of topics caters to upski... Read Full Bio
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