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File Management

Posted By: Niamh Hughes     Category: C Programming     Views: 8742

This article explains about stream, files, buffering and different file operations.

Streams and Files

  • Stream is a consistent interface to devices of varied type like disk drives, terminals, tape drives, screens, keyboards
  • A layer of abstraction is provided 
  • The abstraction, is a stream and actual device is called file
  • A stream behave similarly and largely device independent


Text Streams

  • A text stream is a sequence of characters
  • Standard C allows (but not require) a text stream to be organized into lines terminated by newline character
  • Certain character translation may occur, like converting a newline char to cr/lf sequence
  • There is possible difference between no of chars written and present actually on device

Binary Streams

  • It is a sequence of bytes that have one to one correspondence with external device
  • No character translations may occur, though some padding or null character may be done
  • Number of bytes written always matches no of bytes read
  • It is storing integers, floats etc in their binary format

Buffering 

  • Matching speeds of all the devices is always a problem when attached to stream
  • Ex. Typed chars to be transferred to the disk file not after each keystroke
  • An area of memory called buffer is used 
  • Optimum size of buffer depends on the relative speed of two different devices

Files 

  • A file can be a disk file, a terminal, keyboard, screen, printer, anything like that!
  • File is associated with a stream using an open operation
  • Once the file is open, information exchange is possible between your prog and file
  • A disk file can support random access while a printer generally not
  • All files are not same, though  all streams are same
  • If the file can support position request, it also initializes position indicator to the start of file when opened
  • As each character is read or written to the file, PI gets incremented
  • close disassociates file from stream

Close Operation using exit() function

  • When a file closed which is opened for output, the contents if any, are written to the external device (flushing!)
  • Buffers and stream
  • All files are not closed at the time of abnormal termination or by abort()
  • All files are closed when returning from main() or using exit()

FILE 

  • FILE is a structure which contains the file control information associated with each file
  • FILE defines nine fields that represent the current status of the stream
  • Contains buffer empty/full info, file status flags, file desc, buffer size, current active pointer, stamp for validity checking etc

File Pointer

  • The file pointer is a pointer to struct FILE
  • It that’s why points to information about the file like it’s name, status & current position
  • It, identifies a specific file and is used by associated stream to direct the operation of the IO functions
  • To obtain a file pointer variable use
FILE *fp;


Opening a File


File Modes

Mode Meaning
r Open existing text file for read only
w Create a text file for write only
a Open or create a text file for append
(r/w/a)b All operations with binary file
(r/w/a) (b/t) + All operations with either binary or text file with read and write


Closing a File using fclose() function

  • int fclose( FILE *fp);
  • It closes the stream that was opened using the fopen statement
  • It Writes any data still remains in the disk buffer
  • It also frees the FCB associated with the stream and make it available for reuse
  • Returning zero when successful!
  • The function returns EOF when error occurs
  • When disk is full or removed it can make fclose fail
  • FOPEN_MAX limit is reached, then one may need to close a file to open another
  • Failure to close may lead to lost data, destroyed files, or some intermittent problems
  
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Niamh Hughes
Niamh Hughes author of File Management is from London, United Kingdom.
 
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