Thread: Printing out contents of a file to the screen

Gday all,

I'm trying to get all this file processing under control and i am having a bit of trouble.

I think i can create a file ok and store information into it, but i'm not sure if there is a simple way to print out the contents of a file.
This is whats happening

Code:

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

int main()
{

	FILE *fp;
	int i;

	if((fp = fopen("clients.dat", "r+w")) == NULL)

		printf("Error in opening the file\n");
	else
		printf("FILE IS OPEN\n");

	for (i = 1;i<=10;i++)
			fprintf(fp, "i = %d\n", i);



	fclose(fp);

}

I understand that this creates a file called clients.dat for writing to. Firstly, i havent been able to get the file to open at all.

Code:

if((fp = fopen("clients.dat", "r+w")) == NULL)

This constantly seems to return a NULL value.

In the event that it would open and the information would be entered through the FOR loop, im not sure what to include in the code which would print out the contents of the file

e.g.

FILE IS OPEN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10


in pretty sure there is a simple way to approach this, possibly with the use of fscanf, or fread or something of the like, but i'm just not sure.

Sorry, but on the topic, when would a function like fseek be used?
What is its purpose?
Is it only when dynamic memory is allocated using malloc() and it goes to a certain point of memory in the file?

Thanks if anyone can help.

Code:

while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
        fputs( buff, stdout );

could you explain what while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) is doing, with buff and BIFSIZ, are they standard variable names or user defined?

Also if you could outline what happens in the fputs( buff, stdout ); line?

Thanks again.

Originally posted by Simon

Code:

while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
        fputs( buff, stdout );

could you explain what while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) is doing, with buff and BIFSIZ, are they standard variable names or user defined?

Also if you could outline what happens in the fputs( buff, stdout ); line?

Thanks again.

hehe Well that is easy... it is saing that ...
whilte fgets/get char/(buff/holds in to array/wich is [BUFSIZ, and fp is your file pointer..


correct me if im wrong!

are you referring to -

http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html?

or something else?

OK, this should be the end.

So what happens in this:

Code:

while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
        fputs( buff, stdout );

is that it checks each line and as long as it isn't NULL is prints it to the screen or stdout?? Then it checks the next line and so on?
Thus the while loop?

I hope i'm right.

Thanks for the Link Salem, its a good one.

Code:

while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
        fputs( buff, stdout );

The first line will go through all lines in the file, one at a time, till fgets( ) returns NULL.

When does fgets( ) return ?
1) newline character ( \n ) reached.
2) BUFSIZ - 1 characters have been read.
3) EOF ( End Of File ).
4) Error occured while reading.

The last 2 make fgets( ) return NULL.

Otherwise it will rturn the pointer to the buffer ( buff ).

fputs( ) just puts a string on the screen. It will not add any newline character to the end of the string.

Originally posted by Simon

as long as it isn't NULL it prints it to the screen or stdout??

The screen, (otherwise known as stdout)

In this code

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
int main ( ) {
    char buff[BUFSIZ];
    FILE *fp = fopen( "file.txt", "r" );
    if ( fp == NULL ) { /* error */ }
    while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
        fputs( buff, stdout );
    }
    fclose( fp );
    return 0;
}

can you let me know why

Code:

char buff[BUFSIZ];

is needed?

is it just to set a maximum size for fgets to check or something of the like?

Every array must have a size.

Code:

#define BUFSIZ 4096 /* for instance */

...

char buff[BUFFSIZ];

fgets( ) needs as its second argument the size of the array where the line read is to be saved. It could also be written as:

Code:

while ( fgets( buff, sizeof buff, fp ) != NULL )

I posted it before but are buff and bufsiz standard variable names, do they have to be used and are they only used to show the size of the file?

so let me just summarise:

>>char buf[BUFSIZ];
needs to be declared because when the compiler sees fgets() it needs to know how big the file is

>>#define BUFSIZ 4028
i'm guessing this isn't necessary

Code:

while ( fgets( buff, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
        fputs( buff, stdout );
    }

in terms of fputs( buff, stdout); , it prints the contents of buff at that point in time to the stdout/screen, and then checks the next line. If the next line doesn't contain a NUll value then it will call fpts() again.

Thanks again for everyones help and patience.