fopen does not create new file for fwrite

I'm trying to use fwrite to write an array of 65,536 8-bit values with a few other pieces of data added in. While I know how to use fwrite, the problem I'm having is with fopen - the pointer is always 0 when using wb mode. Basically:

Code:

int StartHeight;
char SlopeData[65536];

...

// in a function
GetCurrentDirectory(MAX_PATH, BasePath); // the location of the executable
sprintf(FullPath, "%s\\data\\terrain\\Terrain03.dat", BasePath); // get the full path
FileHandle = fopen(FullFileName, "wb"); // write output, binary mode

if (FileHandle == 0) // if the file can't be found - report an error
{
   sprintf(WarningString, "Error:  file cannot be opened for writing", FullFileName);
   MessageBox(WindowHandle, WarningString, "File cannot be opened", MB_OK | MB_ICONHAND);
}

else // file found - write the needed data
{
   fwrite(&StartHeight, 4, 1, FileHandle); // the baseline
   fwrite(SlopeData, 1, 65536, FileHandle); // the main data
   fclose(FileHandle); // close the file releasing the handle
}

The content in the if statement is being used as the file handle is 0. That I'd expect. However, shouldn't fopen, for writing, create the file if it doesn't exist or do I have to go into Windows Explorer and manually create the files and folders as needed (which shouldn't be necessary)?

It will create the file, if it can. fopen can't create a directory, for instance, so if there was no terrain subdirectory in your data directory already existing, then fopen will always fail (since it can't make that directory to put the file in).

And I suppose it never hurts to print out your FullFileName just to make sure it's what you think it is.

is FullFileName a valid filename? Do you have permission to create files in that directory? Does the file already exist and you don't have permissions to modify it?

To answer your question, yes, fopen(filename, "wb") should create the file.

It looks like you might be getting your FullPath and FullFileName variables mixed up? Hard to tell without seeing the rest of the code.

tabstop pretty much explains it. Neither the "data" nor "terrain" directories exist. I thought fopen and the like actually created new directories as needed. Creating the directories in Windows Explorer has now made it work as expected. The data output is not quite what I'm expecting, upon viewing it in a hex editor (I've got a bug that lies elsewhere unrelated to this).

Originally Posted by ulillillia

I'm trying to use fwrite to write an array of 65,536 8-bit values with a few other pieces of data added in. While I know how to use fwrite, the problem I'm having is with fopen - the pointer is always 0 when using wb mode. Basically:

Code:

int StartHeight;
char SlopeData[65536];

...

// in a function
GetCurrentDirectory(MAX_PATH, BasePath); // the location of the executable
sprintf(FullPath, "%s\\data\\terrain\\Terrain03.dat", BasePath); // get the full path
FileHandle = fopen(FullFileName, "wb"); // write output, binary mode

if (FileHandle == 0) // if the file can't be found - report an error
{
   sprintf(WarningString, "Error:  file cannot be opened for writing", FullFileName);
   MessageBox(WindowHandle, WarningString, "File cannot be opened", MB_OK | MB_ICONHAND);
}

else // file found - write the needed data
{
   fwrite(&StartHeight, 4, 1, FileHandle); // the baseline
   fwrite(SlopeData, 1, 65536, FileHandle); // the main data
   fclose(FileHandle); // close the file releasing the handle
}

The content in the if statement is being used as the file handle is 0. That I'd expect. However, shouldn't fopen, for writing, create the file if it doesn't exist or do I have to go into Windows Explorer and manually create the files and folders as needed (which shouldn't be necessary)?

Look closely... you string print the full path to FullPath but you're opening FullFilename

>tabstop pretty much explains it. Neither the "data" nor "terrain" directories exist. I thought fopen and the like actually created new directories as needed. Creating the directories in Windows Explorer has now made it work as expected. The data output is not quite what I'm expecting, upon viewing it in a hex editor (I've got a bug that lies elsewhere unrelated to this).

Have you read what itsme86 mentioned yet? He's got the solution for the problem mate. Looks through code!!

ssharish

The problem is solved and I've already got the terrain loading as I'm expecting. Close the game engine and reopen it and I see the terrain exactly as I left it. The problem was that fopen does not create directories, it only creates files. When I posted my code, I changed names around. "FullPath" was actually originally "FullFileName", but I forgot to change this.

The bug was that SlopeData in the engine is stored is as an array of ints when the file itself was intended to be written using unsigned chars. There are 75 unique slope steepness variations so, to efficiently store the data, using up the least amount of disk space possible, I intended to have the slope data stored as an 8-bit value - it was writing the 32-bit values one byte at a time. I just forgot to add in that conversion.