All I can find using fopen() and fwrite() in C is to delete all contents and start writing again or append to the end of the file. What if I need to go to some offset in the file and overwrite a few bytes?
Is that possible with some function?
You can open the file with the "rb+" option and then use fseek with SEEK_SET to go to a specific location. Therb+ opens it for both reading and writing as a binary file (the file must exist in order for it to succeed - it will not create a new file).
Related
Say we have a file pointer like this:
FILE *output = fopen("test.out", "w");
After writing to it, I want to read it using fgetc
However when I do:
char c1 = fgetc(output);
and then I print out c1 I get that c1 equals -1 which means there was an error in fgetc. Is it because I opened the file using "w"?
How can I read and write from the same file in the same function?
If you want to be able to both read and write the file, you should open it in write/update mode (ie pass “w+” to the mode argument instead of just “w”)
Also be sure to do a frewind() or fseek() before trying to read from the file, otherwise you’ll be trying to read past the end of the file’s data.
You can't read from a write-only file. Open the file for read/write access using "w+" instead.
Also, after you write to the file, you have to seek backwards with fseek() before you can then read what you previously wrote.
Here's my issue: I have a file with the highscore written in it (just the first line, no nicknames, just the highscore), I need to read that line and compare it with the actual score obtained in the game session, if the score is higher, overwrite the file with the new value, but if I try to read it I get a null value... Seems like i'm not reading it the right way. What's wrong with my code?
Thanks for the help!
local path = system.pathForFile( "data.sav", system.DocumentsDirectory )
local file = io.open( path, "w+" )
highscore_letta = file:read("*n")
print(highscore_letta)
if (_G.player_score > tonumber(highscore_letta)) then
file:write(_G.player_score)
end
io.close( file )
I had this problem myself. I found out that if you open a file in "w+" mode, the current contents are deleted, so that you can write new contents. So to read and write you have to open the file twice. First, you open the file in "rb" mode and get the file contents, then close it. Then you reopen it in "wb" mode, write the new number, and close it.
In Windows, you need "b" in the file mode. Otherwise, the strings that you are reading and writing may be modified in unexpected ways: for instance, a newline ("\n") may be replaced with carriage return–newline ("\r\n").
The file modes that Lua supports are borrowed from the C language. (I found a description on page 305 of what I guess is a draft of the C specification.) I think the Lua manual sort of assumes that you will know what these modes mean, as an experienced C programmer would, but to me it wasn't at all obvious.
Thus to read a number and then write a new one:
local filepath = "path/to/file"
-- Create a file handle that will allow you to read the current contents.
local read_file = io.open(filepath, "rb")
number = read_file:read "*n" -- Read one number. In Lua 5.3, use "n"; the asterisk is not needed.
read_file:close() -- Close the file handle.
local new_number = 0 -- Replace this with the number you actually want to write.
-- Create a file handle that allows you to write new contents to the file,
-- while deleting the current contents.
write_file = io.open(filepath, "wb")
write_file:write(new_number) -- Overwrite the entire contents of the file.
write_file:flush() -- Make sure the new contents are actually saved.
write_file:close() -- Close the file handle.
I created a script to do these operations automatically, as they're somewhat annoying to type every time.
The mode "r+" or "r+b" is supposed to allow you to read and write, but I couldn't get it to work when the original contents are longer than the new contents. If the original contents are "abcd", four bytes, and the new contents are "efg", three bytes, and you write at offset 0 in the file, the file will now have "efgd": the last byte of the original contents is not deleted.
I created a File of 4000 blocks with a blocksize of 4096 Bytes.
Now I want to manipulate single blocks and read them again without changeing the files' size.
Actually I want to write blocks out of another file to specific blocks in the file I created.
Therefore I am opening the Files in binarymode like this:
FILE * storeFile=fopen(targetFile, "wb"); // this one I created before
FILE * sourceFILE=fopen(sourceFile,"rb");
now I am trying to read stuff to a pointer
char * ptr=malloc(4096);
...
for(i=0; i<blocks_needed; i++)
{
fread(ptr,4096,1,sourceFile);
// now I am going to the position of the blocks I want to write to
fseek(storeFile,freeBlocks[i]*4096,SEEK_SET);
// and now I am writing it to the File I created before
fwrite(ptr,4096,1,storeFile);
...
}
For some reason the File I created before changes it's size and becomes a copy of the file I wanted to write into it.
What am I doing wrong?
Thank you in advance!
From the fopen man page:
``w'' Truncate to zero length or create text file for writing. The stream is positioned at the beginning of the file.
You're erasing the destination file every time you open it. You might be interested in a or a+:
``a'' Open for writing. The file is created if it does not exist. The stream is positioned at the end of the file. Subsequent writes to the file will always end up at the then current end of file, irrespective of any intervening fseek(3) or similar.
``a+'' Open for reading and writing. The file is created if it does not exist. The stream is positioned at the end of the file. Subsequent writes to the file will always end up at the then current end of file, irrespective of any intervening fseek(3) or similar.
The problem is that your seek needs to be to some byte offset from the start of the file.
As the blocks are 4096 in length the offset would be (long)i * 4096;
I think you are seeking to the wrong position as the freeBlocks[i] is presumably an address.
It might be a very dumb question but I am modifying someone else's code and it seems I need to read from a file that was opened in append mode. I tried to fseek to the beginning of the file but nothing is being read.
I know I can change the mode to rw but I wanted to know why fseek is not working. In the man page it does say write ignores fseek but nothing about read though.
There is just one pointer which initially is at the start of the file but when a write operation is attempted it is moved to the end of the file. You can reposition it using fseek or rewind anywhere in the file for reading, but writing operations will move it back to the end of file.
When you open in append mode, the file pointer is returned to the end of file before every write. You can reposition the pointer with fseek for reading, but as soon as you call a function that writes to the file, the pointer goes back to the end of file.
The answer at Does fseek() move the file pointer to the beginning of the file if it was opened in "a+b" mode? references the appropriate section of the C standard.
Use the "w+" mode if you would like to write to arbitrary places in file. An existing file will be overwritten.
If you would like to append to an existing file initially, but then fseek to arbitrary place, use "r+" followed by
fseek(f, 0, SEEK_END)
Hope it helps..
If a file is opened using the following command:
FILE *f1=fopen("test.dat","a+");
The man page reads:
a+
Open for reading and appending (writing at end of file). The
file is created if it does not exist. The initial file position
for reading is at the beginning of the file, but output is
always appended to the end of the file.
So does f1 have 2 separate offset pointers, one for read & another for write?
No.
There is just one pointer which initially is at the start of the file but when a write operation is attempted it is moved to the end of the file. You can reposition it using fseek or rewind anywhere in the file for reading, but writing operations will move it back to the end of file.
No it has only one pointer.
You can never mix reading and writing operations on a FILE without calling fseek in between. It may work as you wish on some implementations, but a program that depends on this has undefined behavior. Thus the questions of having 2 positions is meaningless.