Thread: copying contents of text file defined at runtime into an array

Originally Posted by sagar474

Stream I/O is BUFFERED: That is to say a fixed ``chunk'' is read from or written to a file via some temporary storage area (the buffer). NOTE the file pointer actually points to this buffer.

Ummmm... no... the file pointer is the next position in the disk file... if it pointed at the buffer fseek() would be useless.

The first time you have to seek to position 8,000,000,000 on a system with 2gigs of ram, you'll understand that.

if you really need to read directly form disk you can use Low Level I/O.

Most OSs will no longer permit low level disk I/O at the application level and for the most part it's downright silly to try to bypass the OS safeguards... one bad call and you end up reformatting your disks and reinstalling everything... NOT an acceptable risk.

Ummmm... no... the file pointer is the next position in the disk file... if it pointed at the buffer fseek() would be useless.

The first time you have to seek to position 8,000,000,000 on a system with 2gigs of ram, you'll understand that.

hence fixed ``chunk'' is read.

Most OSs will no longer permit low level disk I/O at the application level and for the most part it's downright silly to try to bypass the OS safeguards... one bad call and you end up reformatting your disks and reinstalling everything... NOT an acceptable risk.

Help - IBM Mac OS X Compilers
read the line in the above link.
Use the low-level I/O functions, such as open and close. These functions are faster and more specific to the application than the stream I/O functions like fopen and fclose. You must provide your own buffering for the low-level functions.