C File Handling

File I/O

C File Handling

C files I/O functions handles data on secondary storage device, such as a hard disk.

C can handle files as Stream-oriented data (Text) files and System oriented data (Binary) files.

Stream oriented data files	The data is stored in same manner as it appears on the screen. The I/O operations like buffering, data conversions etc. take place automatically.
System oriented data files	System-oriented data files are more closely associated with the OS and data stored in memory without converting into text format.

C File Operations

There are five major operations that can be performed on a file are:

• Creation of a new file.
• Opening an existing file.
• Reading data from a file.
• Writing data in a file.
• Closing a file.

Steps for Processing a File

• Declare a file pointer variable.
• Open a file using fopen() function.
• Process the file using suitable function.
• Close the file using fclose() function.

To handling files in C, file input/output functions available in the stdio library are:

Function	Uses/Purpose
fopen	Opens a file.
fclose	Closes a file.
getc	Reads a character from a file
putc	Writes a character to a file
getw	Read integer
putw	Write integer
fprintf	Prints formatted output to a file
fscanf	Reads formatted input from a file
fgets	Read string of characters from file
fputs	Write string of characters to file
feof	Detects end-of-file marker in a file