Help required in understanding fread call!!

Code:

In the following program,I have doubt in the second printf which is in the child 
process.Actually in file opreations,file descriptor will be shared among parent
 and child process.
So,We should get output as 4107 in second printf.
But instead of that i got 11.
Please clarify me why it is happening!!!

code:
====
#include <stdio.h>
#include <memory.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

main() {
        FILE *fp;
        char buff[11];
        int pid , i ;
        fp = fopen ( "book.txt" , "w+" );

        for ( i = 0 ; i < 4096 ; i++ )
                fprintf(fp , "A" );
        for ( i = 0 ; i < 4096 ; i++ )
                fprintf(fp , "B" );
        for ( i = 0 ; i < 4096 ; i++ )
                fprintf(fp , "C" );
        for ( i = 0 ; i < 4096 ; i++ )
                fprintf(fp , "D" );

        fclose(fp);
        fp = fopen("book.txt","r");

        pid = fork();

        if ( pid == 0 ) {
                printf("Child starts...ftell -> %ld\n",ftell(fp));
                fread ( buff , sizeof(buff) , 1 , fp );
                buff[10] = '\0';
                printf("Child -> After child fread -> ftell -> %ld %s\n",ftell(fp),buff);
                sleep(5);
                printf("Child -> After parent read ->ftell -> %ld %s\n",ftell(fp),buff);

                fread(buff,sizeof(buff),1,fp);
                buff[10] = '\0';
                printf("Child -> After 2nd child fread -> ftell -> %ld %s\n",ftell(fp),buff);
        }
        else {
                sleep(1);
                printf("Initially in parent -> ftell -> %ld \n",ftell(fp));
                fread(buff,sizeof(buff),1,fp);
                buff[10] = '\0';
                printf("After parent read -> ftell -> %ld %s\n",ftell(fp),buff);

        }
        fclose(fp);
}



Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Rajisankar

Why is it you think you should be getting 4107? You read 11 bytes, so why do you think ftell should give you something else?


Quzah.

sizeof(buff) is 11. That should give you a hint.

Originally Posted by quzah

Why is it you think you should be getting 4107? You read 11 bytes, so why do you think ftell should give you something else?


Quzah.

Code:

Quzah!! It should be 4107.
Because fread will read 4096 bytes in 16-bit processor.
But it returned whatever the size we defined in buff.( here sizeof(buff) is 11 )
So,In child process,first fread actually reads 4096 bytes,but it returns 11 bytes 
while using ftell function.(This is the beauty of fread function)
By this concept it returns 4096 in parent process.
After fread in parent process,actually the fread pointer will be in 8192 .
But it returns 4107(4096+11).
Right now,no problem in understanding...Here my doubt started......
"In file operations,file descriptor will be shared among parent and child processes."
So, the second printf which is in Child process will return 4107.
But it is not happen.
I know some concepts behind this issue.But i cannot found yet.

Thanks.

I would suggest you stop trying to understand undefined behaviour, because it won't be anything you can re-use in another programming scenario.

You're basically asking "I drove my car into a wall and I survived - why is that?"

This is "voodoo" programming. You can come up with all the bizarre "I can explain....", cases you want, but most people who know what they're talking about will just see that you're blowing smoke out of your ass.

If you really want to know how to read the same file in two separate processes, then ask "How do I read a file in two separate processes".
Not what you posted, seeking some mystical explanation for it, in the hope of understanding how it might work for you (because it never will, reliably).

Note that file descriptors created by dup(2) or fork(2) share the current file position pointer, so seeking on such files may be subject to race conditions.

lseek(2): reposition read/write file offset - Linux man page