C library function - fopen()

Description

The C library function FILE *fopen(const char *filename, const char *mode) opens the filename pointed to by filename using the given mode.

Declaration

Following is the declaration for fopen() function.

FILE *fopen(const char *filename, const char *mode)

Parameters

filename -- This is the C string containing the name of the file to be opened.
mode -- This is the C string containing a file access mode.It includes:

mode	Description
"r"	Open a file for reading. The file must exist.
"w"	Create an empty file for writing. If a file with the same name already exists its content is erased and the file is considered as a new empty file.
"a"	Append to a file. Writing operations append data at the end of the file. The file is created if it does not exist.
"r+"	Open a file for update both reading and writing. The file must exist.
"w+"	Create an empty file for both reading and writing.
"a+"	Open a file for reading and appending.

Return Value

This function returns a FILE pointer. Otherwise, NULL is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

Example

The following example shows the usage of fopen() function.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
   FILE * fp;

   fp = fopen ("file.txt", "w+");
   fprintf(fp, "%s %s %s %d", "We", "are", "in", 2012);
   
   fclose(fp);
   
   return(0);
}

Let us compile and run the above program, this will createa file file.txt with the following content:

We are in 2012

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