Thread: End of file

The short answer is: No.

The size of a file is contained in its directory entry, and doesn't depend on any character contained in the file itself.

Now, back in the olden days (CP/M, anyone?), file lengths were defined in multiples of some block size, and if the size of a text file was not an exact multiple of the block size, a special non-printing character was placed to indicate the end of the file. This character was ascii 26 (sometimes known as control-z).

[edit]
As a matter of fact, if you put control-z (ascii 26) somewhere in a text file, I have found out that a c-program compiled by Borland C++ 5.5.1 will return EOF when getchar() encounters that character. (Also Microsoft Visual C++). Legacy code from ???? Or feature ???

Gnu C does not exhibit this behavior on Windows or Linux platforms.
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Dave

>So my problem is Can i insert end of file in middle of a text file and if yes then how??

EOF is NOT:

• A char
• A value that exists at the end of a file
• A value that could exist in the middle of a file

How can I insert or delete a line (or record) in the middle of a file?
Short of rewriting the file, you probably can't. The usual solution is simply to rewrite the file.

[edit]>is there any non standard funtion to do what i wanna do??

When you go nonstandard, it's best to mention the platform. But here is somewhere to start:

• truncate, ftruncate

Originally Posted by Dave Evans

[edit]
As a matter of fact, if you put control-z (ascii 26) somewhere in a text file, I have found out that a c-program compiled by Borland C++ 5.5.1 will return EOF when getchar() encounters that character. (Also Microsoft Visual C++). Legacy code from ???? Or feature ???

Gnu C does not exhibit this behavior on Windows or Linux platforms.
[/edit]


Dave

Yeah, in UNIX (and I assume Linux) EOF is simply that, end of file - the read() routine returns how many bytes are left of whatever is being read - if that number is 0, then its end of file.

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