Manually copy a PNG file using fgetc() and fputc() in C - c

I am trying to manually copy a PNG file by reading individual bytes (chars) from one file, and then using fputc() to place them into another file. This is essentially a proof of concept as the end goal is to deconstruct the file into a byte stream that can be sent to a socket and then the client on the other side can reconstruct the image. Here is the code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main() {
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen("picture.PNG", "rb");
fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_SET); // seek to beginning of file
FILE *wfp;
wfp = fopen("copy.PNG", "w");
int c;
while(TRUE){
c = fgetc(fp);
if (feof(fp)){
break;
}
fputc(c, wfp);
}
fclose(wfp);
fclose(fp);
return 0;
}
The resulting PNG file seems to be a copy of the original in that it has the same/similar size and when opening it in notepad and comparing to the original they look the same. However, I can't open it as a PNG and see the original image, which is the whole point.
How do I fix this code or what is the right way to accomplish my goal? Thanks.

Related

Replacing bytes at current offset in c

I'm currently developing a program that mimics UNIX file system. I've prepared my disk as file (1 MB) got all data blocks inside it. Now what I'm doing is implementing some simple commands like mkdir, ls etc. In order to work with those commands, I need to read specific offset(no problem with that) and write the modified blocks to specific location.
Simply my goal is:
SIIIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD (Current Disk)
I wan't to change three blocks with AAA after 16.byte so it will be like:
SIIIDDDDDDDDDDDDAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD (Modified Disk)
I'm not going to provide all of my implementation here I just want to have some ideas about it how can I implement it without buffering all the 1 MB data in my program. In short I know locations of my data blocks so I just want to replace that part of my file not whole file. Can't I simply do this with file stream functions ?
Another example:
fseek(from_disk,superblock.i_node_bit_map_starting_addr , SEEK_SET); //seek to known offset.
read_bit_map(&from_disk); // I can read at specific location without problem
... manipulate bit map ...
fseek(to_disk,superblock.i_node_bit_map_starting_addr , SEEK_SET); //seek to known offset.
write_bit_map(&to_disk); //Write back the data.
//This will destroy the current data of file. (Tried with w+, a modes.)
Note: Not provided in example but I have two file pointers both writing and reading and I'm aware I need to close one before opening another.
I think you are looking for the r+ (potentially rb+ mode). Here is a complete example, afterwards you can run grep -n hello data.txt to verify for yourself the result. You can run it with make prog && ./prog.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, char const *argv[])
{
FILE *file;
file = fopen("data.txt", "w+");
char dummy_data[] = "This is stackoverflow.com\n";
int dummy_data_length = strlen(dummy_data);
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; ++i)
fwrite(dummy_data, dummy_data_length, 1, file);
fclose(file);
file = fopen("data.txt", "r+");
fseek(file, 500, SEEK_CUR);
fwrite("hello", 5, 1, file);
fclose(file);
return 0;
}

C fopen and fgets returning weird characters instead of file contents

I am doing a coding exercise and I need to open a data file that contains lots of data. It's a .raw file. Before I build my app I open the 'card.raw' file in a texteditor and in a hexeditor. If you open it in textEdit you will see 'bit.ly/18gECvy ˇÿˇ‡JFIFHHˇ€Cˇ€Cˇ¿Vˇƒ' as the first line. (The url points to Rick Roll as a joke by the professor.)
So I start building my app to open the same 'card.raw' file. I'm doing initial checks to see the app print to the console the same "stuff" as when I open it with TextEdit. Instead of printing out I see when I open it with TextEdit (see the text above), it starts and continues printing out text that looks like this:
\377\304 'u\204\206\226\262\302\3227\205\246\266\342GSc\224\225\245\265\305\306\325\326Wgs\244\346(w\345\362\366\207\264\304ǃ\223\227\2678H\247\250\343\344\365\377\304
Now I have no idea what the '\' and numbers are called (what do I search for to read more?), why it's printing that instead of the characters (unicode?) I see when I open in TextEdit, or if I can convert this output to hex or unicode.
My code is:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <limits.h>
int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) {
FILE* file;
file = fopen("/Users/jamesgoldstein/CS50/CS50Week4/CS50Recovery/CS50Recovery/CS50Recovery/card.raw", "r");
char output[LINE_MAX];
if (file != NULL)
{
for (int i = 1; fgets(output, LINE_MAX, file) != NULL; i++)
{
printf("%s\n", output);
}
}
fclose(file);
return 0;
}
UPDATED & SIMPLIFIED CODE USING fread()
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) {
FILE* fp = fopen("/Users/jamesgoldstein/CS50/CS50Week4/CS50Recovery/CS50Recovery/CS50Recovery/card.raw", "rb");
char output[256];
if (fp == NULL)
{
printf("Bad input\n");
return 1;
}
for (int i = 1; fread(output, sizeof(output), 1, fp) != NULL; i++)
{
printf("%s\n", output);
}
fclose(fp);
return 0;
}
Output is partially correct (here's a snippet of the beginning):
bit.ly/18gECvy
\377\330\377\340
\221\241\26145\301\321\341 "#&23DE\3616BFRTUe\202CVbdfrtv\222\242
'u\204\206\226\262\302\3227\205\246\266\342GSc\224\225\245\265\305\306\325\326Wgs\244\346(w\345\362\366\207\264\304ǃ\223\227\2678H\247\250\343\344\365\377\304
=\311\345\264\352\354 7\222\315\306\324+\342\364\273\274\205$z\262\313g-\343wl\306\375My:}\242o\210\377
3(\266l\356\307T饢"2\377
\267\212ǑP\2218 \344
Actual card.raw file snippet of beginning
bit.ly/18gECvy ˇÿˇ‡JFIFHHˇ€Cˇ€Cˇ¿Vˇƒ
ˇƒÖ
!1AQa$%qÅë°±45¡—· "#&23DEÒ6BFRTUeÇCVbdfrtví¢
I think you should open the .raw file in the mode "rb".
Then use fread()
From the presence of the string "JFIF" in the first line of the file card.raw ("bit.ly/18gECvy ˇÿˇ‡JFIFHHˇ€Cˇ€Cˇ¿Vˇƒ") it seems like card.raw is a JPEG image format file that had the bit.ly URL inserted at its beginning.
You are going to see weird/special characters in this case because it is not a usual text file at all.
Also, as davmac pointed out, the way you are using fgets isn't appropriate even if you were dealing with an actual text file. When dealing with plain text files in C, the best way is to read the entire file at once instead of line by line, assuming sufficient memory is available:
size_t f_len, f_actualread;
char *buffer = NULL;
fseek(file, 0, SEEK_END)
f_len = ftell(fp);
rewind(fp);
buffer = malloc(f_len + 1);
if(buffer == NULL)
{
puts("malloc failed");
return;
}
f_actualread = fread(buffer, 1, f_len, file);
buffer[f_actualread] = 0;
printf("%s\n", output);
free(buffer);
buffer = NULL;
This way, you don't need to worry about line lengths or anything like that.
You should probably use fread rather than fgets, since the latter is really designed for reading text files, and this is clearly not a text file.
Your updated code in fact does have the very problem I originally wrote about (but have since retracted), since you are now using fread rather than fgets:
for (int i = 1; fread(output, sizeof(output), 1, fp) != NULL; i++)
{
printf("%s\n", output);
}
I.e. you are printing the output buffer as if it were a null-terminated string, when in fact it is not. Better to use fwrite to STDOUT.
However, I think the essence of the problem here is trying to display arbitrary bytes (which don't actually represent a character string) to the terminal. The terminal may interpret some byte sequences as commands which affect what you see. Also, textEdit may determine that the file is in some character encoding and decode characters accordingly.
Now I have no idea what the '\' and numbers are called (what do I search for to read more?)
They look like octal escape sequences to me.
why it's printing that instead of the characters (unicode?)
It's nothing to do with unicode. Maybe it's your terminal emulator deciding that those characters are unprintable, and so replacing them with an escape sequence.
In short, I think that your method (comparing visually what you see in a text editor with what you see on the terminal) is flawed. The code you have to read from the file looks correct; I'd suggest proceeding with the exercise and checking results then, or if you really want to be sure, look at the file using a hex editor, and have your program output the byte values it reads (as numbers) - and compare those with what you see in the hex editor.

read operation without fseek in a+ mode causes extra white spaces in the file

When I executed below code, m2.txt created correctly as expected with the specified data.
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
FILE *fp1;
char ch;
fp1=fopen("m2.txt", "a+");
fputs("Hello, data is appended\0", fp1);
fseek(fp1,0,SEEK_SET);
while((ch=getc(fp1))!=EOF)
{
putc(ch,stdout);
}
fclose(fp1);
return 0;
}
Now I commented fseek and executed the below code. (I deleted this m2.txt file before executing)
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
FILE *fp1;
char ch;
fp1=fopen("m2.txt", "a+");
fputs("Hello, data is appended\0", fp1);
//fseek(fp1,0,SEEK_SET);
while((ch=getc(fp1))!=EOF)
{
putc(ch,stdout);
}
fclose(fp1);
return 0;
}
To my surprise, displayed data on the screen had just whitespaces. Even "Hello, data is appended"was missing. Also the m2.txt file had many white spaces.
Why this problem? If fseek is not done before read, it should affect only read operation I thought. Why extra spaces are getting written to the file?
In a+ mode, read pointer is pointing to the beginning if no write operation is done. But in case write operation is done, pointer will be at the end I suppose. In such case, read should not be displaying anything without fseek right? In anycase, issues could be there with read. But why write is having issues even though write is done before read.
I am using Codeblock 15.12 and default mingw came with codeblock.
Edited:
I further thought if it could be some compiler related issue. Grabbed old Visual Studio 6 and compiled. Several lines of unreadable characters are printed at the end. So it is not compiler issue. Somewhere some silly issue is there it looks.
After some search, I found that fflush() or fclose() or fseek() is needed before reading the file. Otherwise the entire write buffer may be filled/affected. Tried with fflush() and write operation did not write any junk at the end even if fseek() is not called. Here is the code (Of course fseek() will be there inplace of fflush() in actual code. I just commented fseek and added fflush() for testing purpose).
int main()
{
FILE *fp1;
char ch;
fp1=fopen("m2.txt", "a+");
fputs("Hello, data is appended", fp1);
fflush(fp1);
// fseek(fp1,0,SEEK_SET);
while((ch=getc(fp1))!=EOF)
{
putchar(ch);
}
fclose(fp1);
return (0);
}

fwrite creates an output file that is bigger than the input file

I want to read a file bytewise into an array and then write the data of the array reversed
in a new file (program takes filename over command line argument). Tried it with an txt-file
and it worked, but if I try it on a jpg-file the new file is bigger than the original!
The determined file size saved in long size; is also correct for jpg-files and write loop
get size-time executed writing one char (char is one byte big, I am right?).
Does anybody know how the output file can get bigger than size*byte?
It doesn't seem logical to me!
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc,char* argv[])
{
FILE *file;
char *buffer;
long size;
char filename[32];
if(argc>1)
{
//determine file size
file=fopen(argv[1],"r");
fseek(file,0,SEEK_END);
size=ftell(file);
rewind(file);
if(size>33554432) //32MB
{
fclose(file);
return 0;
}
//create buffer and read file content
buffer=malloc(33554432);
fread(buffer,1,size,file);
fclose(file);
//create new file name and write new file
strcpy(filename,argv[1]);
strcat(filename,"_");
file=fopen(filename,"w");
{
long i;
for(i=size-1;i>=0;i--)
{
fputc(buffer[i],file);
}
}
fclose(file);
free(buffer);
}
return 0;
}
The comments you're receiving are implying something: the newline character \n works differently in text mode on Windows compared with some other systems.
fputc('\n', file) on Windows actually writes two bytes if file was opened in text mode "w", as if you did fwrite("\r\n", 1, 2, file). This means for any \n byte read by fread, you're writing two bytes back.
If you want to write binary data back, you need to open your output file using the mode "wb" to fopen(). You also need to open it for reading in binary mode, "rb".

Open image file as binary, store image as string of bytes, save the image - possible in plain C?

I would like to read an image, lets say, picture.png in C. I know I can open it in binary mode, and then read - it's pretty simple.
But I need something more: I would like to be able to read the image once, store it in my code, for example, in *.h file, as 'string of bytes', for example:
unsigned char image[] = "0x87 0x45 0x56 ... ";
and then, be able to just do:
delete physical file I read from disk,
save image into file - it will create my file once again,
EVEN if I removed image from disk (deleted physical file picture.png I read earlier) I will still be able to create an image on disk, simply by writing my image array into file using binary mode. Is that possible in pure C? If so, how can I do this?
There's even a special format for this task, called XPM and a library to manipulate these files. But remember due to its nature it's suitable only for relatively small images. But yes, it was used for years in X Window System to provide icons. Well, those old good days icons were 16x16 pixels wide and contained no more than 256 colors :)
Of course it's possible, but it's a bit unclear what you're after.
There are stand-alone programs that convert binary data to C source code, you don't need to implement that. But doing it that way of course means that the image becomes a static part of your program's executable.
If you want it to be more dynamic, like specifying the filename to your program when it's running, then the whole thing about converting to C source code becomes moot; your program is already compiled. C programs can't add to their own source at run-time.
UPDATE If all you want to do is load a file, hold it in memory and then write it back out, all in the same run of your program, that's pretty trivial.
You'd use fopen() to open the file, fseek() to go to the end, ftell() to read the size of the file. Then rewind() it to the start, malloc() a suitable buffer, fread() the file's contents into the buffer and fclose() the file. Later, fopen() a new output file, and fwrite() the buffer into that before using fclose() to close the file. Then you're done. You can do it again, as many times as you like. It can be an image, a program, a document or any other kind of file, it doesn't matter.
pic2h.c :
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
if(argc != 3){
fprintf(stderr, "Usage >pic2h image.png image.h\n");
return -1;
}
FILE *fi = fopen(argv[1], "rb");
FILE *fo = fopen(argv[2], "w");
int ch, count = 0;
fprintf(fo, "extern unsigned char image[];\n");
fprintf(fo, "unsigned char image[] =");
while(EOF!=(ch=fgetc(fi))){
if(count == 0)
fprintf(fo, "\n\"");
fprintf(fo, "\\x%02X", ch);
if(++count==24){
count = 0;
fprintf(fo, "\"");
}
}
if(count){
fprintf(fo, "\"");
}
fprintf(fo, ";\n");
fclose(fo);
fclose(fi);
return 0;
}
resave.c :
#include <stdio.h>
#include "image.h"
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
if(argc != 2){
fprintf(stderr, "Usage >resave image.png\n");
return 0;
}
size_t size = sizeof(image)-1;
FILE *fo = fopen(argv[1], "wb");
fwrite(image, size, 1, fo);
fclose(fo);
return 0;
}

Resources