C PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Lecture 14: File Input/Output

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Standard input/output streams

• 3 standard streams are opened by a program:

• stdin: for input
• stdout: for output
• stderr: for error
• The direction of these streams to peripherals depends on the program, the default is keyboard for
stdin, screen for stdout and stderr
• scanf() and printf() are functions that read/write in stdin and stdout
• perror() prints the errors to stderr

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Example

$input 
Input.c
10 
Input number10
#include <stdio.h>
$input 
void main()
{
abc 
int a;
This is not integer
if ( scanf("%d", &a) != 1 ) $input >out.txt 
perror(“This is not integer\n”); 10 
else $input >out.txt 
printf(“Input number%d", a); abc 
} This is not integer

Redirect stdout
to file out.txt

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Input/output file

• Files need to be opened before use.

• Associate a "file handler" to each file
• Modes: read, write, or append
• File input/output functions use the file handler (not the filename).
• Need to close the file after use.
• Basic file handling functions: fopen(), fclose(), fscanf(), fprintf().
• FILE * is the file handler type

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Example

#include <stdio.h>
Open file to
int main() write
{
FILE * out = fopen(“hello.txt”, “w”);

if (out == NULL)
{
perror(“Unable to write to the file.\n”);
return 1;
} Write data to
file
fprintf(out, “Hello world”);
fclose(out);

return 0;
Close file when
}
terminate

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Modes in open file

• r: read
• w: write
• a: append
• r+: read/write on a new file if not exist
• w+: write on a new file if not exist
• a+: append on a new file if not exist

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fprintf() và printf()

• fprintf works exactly as printf except the output on stdout.

• printf(…) = fprintf(stdout, …)
• Similarly we have other output streams:
• fputs(char*, FILE*) and puts(char*)
• fputc(char, FILE*) and putchar(char)

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fscanf() and scanf()

• fscanf work exactly as scanf except the input on stdin.

• The return type of fscanf() and scanf() is the number of elements read.
• Similarly we have other input streams:
• char* fgets(char*, int maxlen, FILE*) and
• char*gets(char*);
• int fgetc(FILE*) and int getchar(void)

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Input data

• Both scanf() and fscanf() return:

• the number of input items converted and assigned successfully
• or the constant value EOF when an error or end-of-file occurs
• Therefore we can also check EOF using function fscanf
• The input process is the process of scanning data on the buffer according to a specific data type.
• After each successful scan, the buffer’s pointer shifts to the next space in order to scan data for the
next reading time.
• When there is no more data in the buffer, the buffer’s pointer points to EOF.
• To check whether the pointer is at the EOF position or not, using function int feof(FILE*)
Input formats

• Input number following formats %d, %l, %x,…, will skip spaces and 
• %s scans a string not including spaces and .
• %c scans any character at the pointer’s position (including spaces and )
• Example, if we enter “12 ab”
• "%d%s" gives us a number 12 and a string “ab”
• "%d%c%s" gives us a number 12, a space and a string “ab”
• "%d %c%s" gives us a number 12, a character a and a string “b”
• "%s%s" gives us two strings “12” and “ab”
• "%d%s%c" give us a number 12, a string “ab” and a character 

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fflush()

• Function fflush(<stream>) is used to clean an input/ouput buffer

• When a file is closed, its buffer will be automatically cleaned
• fflush() should be used before scanning a character or a string with gets() or fgets()
• Like enter a character, gets() does not skip any character when scanning. This function scans all
spaces and stops at the first . However,  does not include in the target string.

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Example
Input.c
#include <stdio.h> C:\>input 
Input a number: 12
void main() Input a string: ab
{
number 12, string ab
int a;
char s[20];
printf(“Input a number: ”);
scanf(“%d”, &a);

fflush(stdin); %d only gets two

printf(“Input a string: “);
characters ’12’ to convert
gets(s);
to number, the redundant
character  is cleaned by
printf(“number %d, string %s”, a, s);
}
fflush() before enter a
string by gets()

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Calculate total words of a file

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
Open file to
int count = 0;
char s[80];
read
FILE * f = fopen(“text.txt”, “r”);
if (f == NULL)
{
perror(“Failure when opening text file.txt\n”);
return 1;
}
while (!feof(f))
Read a word
dem += fscanf(f, “%s”, s);
each time
fclose(f);
printf(“Total number of words: %d”, dem);
return 0;
}

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fgetc() and fputc()

FILE *input, *output;

input = fopen( "tmp.c", "r" );
output = fopen( "tmpCopy.c", "w+" );

ch = fgetc( input );
while( ch != EOF ) {
fputc( ch, output );
ch = fgetc( input );
}

fclose(input);
fclose(output);
fgets()

#include <stdio.h>
#define LINE_LENGTH 80

main()
{
FILE* fp;
char line[LINE_LENGTH];
int count=0;
fp=fopen("input.txt","r");
while ( fgets(line, LINE_LENGTH, fp) != NULL)
count++;
printf("File contains %d lines.\n", count);
fclose(fp);
}
Text file vs. binary file

• There is no difference among byte data in binary file

• In text file, byte data are categorized as displayed character and control character.
• A text file is marked as end by a control character (e.g., 26 in DOS)
• To open a file in text mode, we add ‘t’ in the open mode ("r+t", "wt", ...).
• To open a file in binary mode, we add ‘b’ in the open mode ("r+b", ...).

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Input/ouput in binary mode
size_t fread(void* buf, size_t size,
size_t num, FILE* f);
size_t fwrite(void* buf, size_t size,
size_t num, FILE* f);

• Read and write data in the memory with the pointer buf, with the total elements num, size of each
element size

Example:
int a[10];
f=fopen("integer.dat", "r+b");
fread(a, 10, sizeof(int), f);

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Exercises

1. Write a program to create a text file F3 by concatenate two text files F1 and F2
F1 = “ha noi”; F2 = “ viet nam” F3 = “ha noi viet nam”
2. Write a program to remove all comments from a C program which is stored in a file. The name of
the file is entered from the keyboard. Assume that the program does not have syntax errors.

3. Assume that a data file consisting information about weather in a year has the format for each
line as follow: \
<day>/<month> <lowest temperature>-<highest temperature> <humidity>
1/1 11-17 70
2/1 12-17 75
…
4. Write a program read data from this file and print the average temperature of all months in a
year, the most humid month and the dryest month.

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THANK YOU !

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