I thought I understood fstat, I was wrong.
I need to know the size of the file then read from the file.
fileN Has the path of the file and the name of the file. It looks like this. 0.txt
struct stat fileStat;
FILE *fp;
int fd = 0;
int i;
for(i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
fp = fopen(fileN, "r");
fd = open(fileN, "r"); // I think this is eating my files and making them 0 size.
fstat(fd, $fileStat);
printf("%d", fileStat.st_size);
fclose(fp);
}
Why do I need to use fd = open(fileN, "r"); To use fstat? It feels like I am opening the file twice.
If fileStat is a struct why do I use fileStat.st_size instead of fileStat->st_size like I do when I create my own structs? Example: myString->characters;
And why is the code above printing 0s when printf is executed? And yes the files have a size bigger than 0 and I have the correct file name and path.
All code above is my interpretation of code that was Googled and mixed with my trial and error implementation. That's why I have so many questions.
EDIT: SOLUTION: open() was being called wrong and affecting the files.
Why do I need to use fd = open(fileN, "r"); To use fstat? It feels like I am opening the file twice.
Because fstat() requires a file descriptor. You could use stat() instead, which takes a filename. Or you could use fd = fileno(fp) to get the file descriptor from the stdio FILE.
BTW, you need to call close(fd) in the loop.
If fileStat is a struct why do I use fileStat.st_size instead of fileStat->st_size like I do when I create my own structs? Example: myString->characters;
You use -> when the variable on the left is a pointer to a struct, you use . when it's the struct itself. This is basic C syntax, nothing specific to fstat.
And why is the code above printing 0s when printf is executed? And yes the files have a size bigger than 0 and I have the correct file name and path.
You're not calling open() correctly. The second argument is supposed to be an int containing flags. Since you give a string instead, the pointer to the string is being coerced to an int, and the bits in this are probably not valid open flags. You need to check the return value of open to see if it succeeded -- it will return -1 if there's an error. Similarly with fstat -- it's probably returning an error because fd is not valid.
Related
I'm learning how to read content from a file in C. And I manage to scrape through the following code.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void read_content(FILE *file) {
char *x = malloc(20);
// read first 20 char
int read = fread(x,sizeof(char),20,file);
if (read != 20) {
printf("Read could not happen\n");
}
else {
printf("the content read is %s",x);
}
free(x);
return;
}
int main(int argc,char *argv[]) {
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen("test.txt","w+");
read_content(fp);
fclose(fp);
return 0;
}
But for some reason (which I'm not able to understand) I see the read bytes count as 0.
The problem is that you open the file with the w+ mode. There are two possibilities:
if the file doesn't exist, it will be created empty. Reading from it immediately gives end of file resulting in fread() returning 0.
if the file does exist, it will be truncated i.e. changed into an empty file. Reading from it immediately gives end of file resulting in fread() returning 0.
If you just want to read from the file (as per your example), open it in mode r. If you want to read and write without destroying its existing content, use mode r+.
Whatever mode you choose, always check that fopen() returns non null and print the error if it returns null (this is not the cause of your problem but is best practice).
From Man Page w+ flag:
Open for reading and writing. The file is created if it does
not exist, otherwise it is truncated.
You are probably trying to open a file which doesn't exist at the path you provided, or is read-only as #WhozCraig suggested in comment. This means a new file is being created, an empty file! hence you are seeing 0 bytes read.
To sum up, The fopen is failing, in that case you need to check the return value if it is equal to -1.
To find what was the error, you can check the errno as it is set to
indicate the error.
If you are only intending to read, open the file with r flag instead of w+
The problem lies within this line of code:
fp = fopen("test.txt","w+")
the "w+" mode, clear the previous content of the file and the file will be empty when you just going to read the file without writing anything to it. Hence, it is printing "Read could not happen" because you are trying to read an empty file.
I would suggest you to use "r+" mode, if you are willing to read and then write into the file. Otherwise, r mode is good enough for simple reading of a file.
So, I have this function on my program that is supposed to save a "car_str" structure into the desired place on a file specified as a parameter. But when I run it, it keeps overwriting the first slot again and again, as if fseek didn't point to the specified place on the file. Is there any problem with my code? I think it may be related with the multiplication, since without it the program does well, but I cannot point to the place I want.
void save(int car_nbr)
{
FILE *f;
f = fopen("memory.txt","wb");
if (!f)
{
printf ("error");
}
else
{
car_nbr--;
fseek(f, sizeof(struct car_str)*car_nbr, SEEK_SET);
fwrite(&car,sizeof(struct car_str),1,f);
rewind(f);
fclose(f);
printf("\nsaved");
}
}
you need to fopen with r+b.
if you fail than file not exist, so you can try use "wb"
"w" - write: Create an empty file for output operations. If a file with the same name already exists, its contents are discarded and the file is treated as a new empty file.
"r+" - read/update: Open a file for update (both for input and output). The file must exist.
f = fopen("memory.txt","r+b");
I need to fill a buffer space with file descriptors of files from a defined source directory. So I have the startup code:
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
DIR *src=opendir(argv[1]);
struct dirent *DirEntry;
char* buffer[200];
do {
DirEntry = readdir(src);
if(DirEntry != NULL) {
//put file into buffer
}
}while(DirEntry!=NULL);
}
How do I complete this loop to place all file descriptors of a given directory into the array called 'buffer'? Should I use an object of DirEntry like DirEntry->d_name to return a file descriptor that I then put into the array?
If you need to move files from a source directory to a destination directory, you are going to need file names much more than you need file descriptors. With the names, you can open and close descriptors whenever needed; without the names, you can't create the files in the target directory sensibly. However, we can handle file descriptors too.
So, assuming you have strdup(), you might use:
typedef struct File
{
char *name;
int fd;
} File;
And in your loop:
if (DirEntry != NULL)
{
buffer[i].name = strdup(DirEntry->d_name);
if (buffer[i].name != 0)
buffer[i].fd = open(buffer[i].name, O_RDONLY);
i++;
}
where buffer is an array of File and i is a convenient integer:
enum { MAX_FILES = 4096 };
int i;
File buffer[MAX_FILES];
You should also add a condition to the main condition to ensure no overflow (or replace the fixed size buffer with a dynamically allocated one):
if (DirEntry != NULL && i < MAX_FILES)
You could sensibly break the loop if i reaches the limit. You could test whether the name represents a file (as opposed to FIFO, block device, character device, socket, symlink, directory, ...); you'd probably use stat() or lstat() for that. The file descriptor would be negative (-1) if the open() call failed. You might conserve entries by not incrementing i if the memory allocation fails, but it is probably not worth worrying about. If the memory allocation for a file name fails, there isn't going to be much else that works.
A file descriptor is "int" typed value that returned by open() system call. It's not in DirEntry structure. So, firstly, you should define the buffer array as int type, then you can open each file in the loop with open() system call, and save open() returned file descriptor in buffer array.
You question doesn't quite make sense. If you want file descriptors you have to open the file or directory with open() to get a file descriptor.
If you just want to store the names of the files in an array, then you can create a two dimensional array using malloc or calloc and copy the d_name member to the next available slot in the array. Alternatively you can use what you have and use a function such as strdup to copy the string to your array, but be careful because you'll need to free it later using free().
If you actually do want file descriptors, you will need to create an array of int rather than char *.
I have opened one file with following way:
fp = fopen("some.txt","r");
Now in this file the 1st some bytes lets say 40 bytes are unnecessary junk of data so I want to remove them. But I cannot delete that data from that file, modify or
create duplicates of that file without that unnecessary data.
So I want to create another dummy FILE pointer which points to the file and when I pass this dummy pointer to any another function that does the following operation:
fseek ( dummy file pointer , 0 , SEEK_SET );
then it should set the file pointer at 40th position in my some.txt.
But the function accepts a file descriptor so i need to pass a file descriptor which will treat the file as those first 40 bytes were never in the file.
In short that dummy descriptor should treat the file as those 40 bytes were not in that file and all positioning operations should be with respect to that 40th byte counting as the is 1st byte.
Easy.
#define CHAR_8_BIT (0)
#define CHAR_16_BIT (1)
#define BIT_WIDTH (CHAR_8_BIT)
#define OFFSET (40)
FILE* fp = fopen("some.txt","r");
FILE* dummy = NULL;
#if (BIT_WIDTH == CHAR_8_BIT)
dummy = fseek (fp, OFFSET*sizeof(char), SEEK_SET);
#else
dummy = fseek (fp, OFFSET*sizeof(wchar_t), SEEK_SET);
#endif
The SEEK_SET macro indicates beginning of file, and depending on whether you are using 8-bit characters (ASCI) or 16-bit characters (eg: UNICODE) you will step 40 CHARACTERS forward from the beginning of your file pointer, and assign that pointer/address to dummy.
Good luck!
These links will likely be helpful as well:
char vs wchar_t
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstdio/fseek/
If you want, you can just convert a file descriptor to a file pointer via the fdopen() call.
http://linux.die.net/man/3/fdopen
fseek ( dummy file pointer , 0 , SEEK_SET );
In short that dummy pointer should treat the file as there is no that 40 byte in that file and all position should be with respect to that 40th byte as counting as it is 1st byte.
You have conflicting requirements, you cannot do this with the C API.
SEEK_SET always refers to the absolute position in the file, which means if you want that command to work, you have to modify the file and remove the junk.
On linux you could write a FUSE driver that would present the file like it was starting from the 40th byte, but that's a lot of work. I'm only mentioned this because it's possible to solve the problem you've created, but it would be quite silly to actually do this.
The simplest thing of course would be just to abandon this emulating layer idea you're looking for, and write code that can handle that extra header junk.
If you want to remove the first 40 bytes of a file on the disk without creating another file, then you can copy the content from the 41th byte and onwards into a buffer, then write it back at offset -40. Then use ftruncate (a POSIX library in unistd.h) to truncate at (filesize - 40) offset.
I wrote a small code with what i understood from your question.
#include<stdio.h>
void readIt(FILE *afp)
{
char mystr[100];
while ( fgets (mystr , 100 , afp) != NULL )
puts (mystr);
}
int main()
{
FILE * dfp = NULL;
FILE * fp = fopen("h4.sql","r");
if(fp != NULL)
{
fseek(fp,10,SEEK_SET);
dfp = fp;
readIt(dfp);
fclose(fp);
}
}
The readIt() is reading the file from the 11 byte.
Is this what you are expecting or something else?
I haven't actually tried this, but I think you should be able to use mmap (with the MAP_SHARED option) to get your file mapped into your address space, and then fmemopen to get a FILE* that refers to all but the first 40 bytes of that buffer.
This gives you a FILE* (as you describe in the body of your question), but I believe not a file descriptor (as in the title and elsewhere in the question). The two are not the same, and AFAIK the FILE* created with fmemopen does not have an associated file descriptor.
Here's how I open a file for writing+ :
if( fopen_s( &f, fileName, "w+" ) !=0 ) {
printf("Open file failed\n");
return;
}
fprintf_s(f, "content");
If the file doesn't exist the open operation fails. What's the right way to fopen if I want to create the file automatically if the file doesn't already exist?
EDIT: If the file does exist, I would like fprintf to overwrite the file, not to append to it.
To overwrite any existing file, use the creat call:
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int fd = creat (fileName, 0666); // creates file if not exist, overwrite existing
FILE *f = fdopen (fd, "w"); // optional, if FILE * type desired
Did you try just doing fopen(name, "w")? Also, you should perhaps extend your code to report what error is being signalled, using e.g. perror().
Note
Incidentally, I would avoid (at least most of) MSVC's _s functions despite the warnings. There's very little point in the first place except when:
The original function either writes to a passed-in buffer, but does not have a parameter to specify the size of the buffer (e.g. strcat()), or
The original function was permitted/required to return a pointer to a static buffer (e.g. strerror()), which makes
and these functions are non-portable. In short, most of these functions (including fopon_s()) are gratuitously non-portable -- using them makes your program less portable but gives no benefit. (The incompatible addendum for C can only make things worse -- unless MS implements it, in which case it might only make things more confusing.)