Need help with file_copy program

Hi,
I wrote this simple file copy program to copy contents from input to output file. The program kind of rins into an infinite loop at read/write stage. Can anyone please point out where I am going wrong.

Code:

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#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

/* size of chunk to be transfered */
#define CHUNK_SIZE 512

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){

        int infile_fd, outfile_fd;                      /* input and output file descriptors */
        int error_read = 0;      /* variables to record error status */
        long *ptr;

        /* check for right cmd line arguments */
        if(argc != 3){
                fprintf(stdout,"Usage : %s <input_file> <output_file>\n", argv[0]);
                exit(1);
        }

        /* Open input file for reading */
        if((infile_fd  = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY)) == -1){
                fprintf(stdout, "Cannot open file for reading\n");
                exit(1);
        }

        /* open output file for writing */
        if((outfile_fd = open(argv[2], O_WRONLY | O_CREAT)) == -1){
                fprintf(stdout, "Cannot open file for writing\n");
                exit(1);
        }

        /* Alllocate CHUNK SIZE of array from heap */
        ptr = (void *)malloc(CHUNK_SIZE);

        /* read returns 0 when end of file is reached */
        while((error_read = read(infile_fd, ptr, CHUNK_SIZE)) != 0){
                write(outfile_fd, ptr, CHUNK_SIZE);
        }

        close(infile_fd);
        close(outfile_fd);
        free(ptr);

        return 0;
}

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Thanks,
Livin

try

Code:

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        while((error_read = read(infile_fd, ptr, CHUNK_SIZE)) < 1 ){

---

read returns -1 on error
Kurt

From the documentation (emphasis mine)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by man 2 read

RETURN VALUE
On success, the number of bytes read is returned (zero indicates end of file), and the
file position is advanced by this number. It is not an error if this number is smaller
than the number of bytes requested; this may happen for example because fewer bytes are
actually available right now (maybe because we were close to end-of-file, or because we
are reading from a pipe, or from a terminal), or because read() was interrupted by a sig‐
nal. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately. In this case it is left
unspecified whether the file position (if any) changes.

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It's possible you have an error reading, instead of end of file, so you may keep getting a return value of -1, which would cause you to keep calling read, which will probably keep returning -1. You should check if error_read <= 0 to stop. Then, after the loop, if it's less than 0, use perror to print a sensible error message as to why the read failed.

Also, you have two problems with your writing. First, read might not read all the bytes you asked for, so you don't want to write CHUNK_SIZE bytes, instead you want to write error_read bytes. Second, you need to check the return value of write for error conditions and for short write counts (unlikely, but hey). Keep writing from where ever you left off in ptr if you didn't write all error_read bytes at once.