Basic file IO in C - c

Question

I am working through the excellent The C Programming Language at the moment, and have got stuck while trying to open and read a file. The program compiles, but seg faults on execution:
$ ./a.out
Segmentation fault
Here is the code:
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
FILE *fp;
fp=fopen("/home/c-sandbox/index.html", "r");
fprintf(fp, "Testing...\n");
fclose(fp);
}
Note that the path points to a real file containing the string "hello, world".
Any ideas on where I am going wrong?

Answer 1

Make sure fp is not NULL before trying to write to it. For example:
if(fp == NULL)
{
fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open file\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE; // defined in stdlib.h
}
You need to open the file with something other than "r", which only allows file reading. Read the man page for fopen to find out which mode would work the best for you. Example:
"w" - Truncate to zero length or create file for writing.
"a" - Append; open or create file for writing at end-of-file.

Answer 2

You opened the file for reading only, and are attempting to write to it.
Use "a" if you want to append to the end of the existing file.
Edit: As others have noted, you're also not checking to see if the file was opened. fopen will return NULL if it fails and set the global variable errno to a value that indicates why it failed. You can get a human-readable explanation using strerror(errno)
if( fp == NULL ) {
printf( "Error opening file: %s\n", strerror( errno ) );
}

Answer 3

You are opening it in readonly mode! Need to use w or a for writing/appending to the file :)
fopen("/home/c-sandbox/index.html", "w");

Answer 4

You should check that fopen does not return NULL. I suspect it is returning NULL and either the fprintf and/or fclose calls are getting messed up.

Answer 5

#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
FILE *fp;
fp=fopen("/home/c-sandbox/index.html", "r");
if(!fp)
{
perror ("The following error occurred");
return ;
}
fgets(line,len,fp);
printf("%s",line);
fclose(fp);
fp=fopen("/home/c-sandbox/index.html", "a");
if(!fp)
{
perror ("The following error occurred");
return ;
}
fprintf(fp, "Testing...\n");
fclose(fp)
}
for reading "hello, world" string present in file.
after reading write to the same file "Testing..."