I'm looking for a cross platform (Windows + Linux) solution to reading the contents of an entire file into a char *
.
This is what I've got now:
FILE *stream;
char *contents;
fileSize = 0;
//Open the stream
stream = fopen(argv[1], "r");
//Steak to the end of the file to determine the file size
fseek(stream, 0L, SEEK_END);
fileSize = ftell(stream);
fseek(stream, 0L, SEEK_SET);
//Allocate enough memory (should I add 1 for the \0?)
contents = (char *)malloc(fileSize);
//Read the file
fscanf(stream, "%s", contents);
//Print it again for debugging
printf("Read %s\n", contents);
Unfortunately this will only print the first line in the file so I assume that fscanf stops at the first newline character. However I would like to read the entire file including, and preserving, the new line characters. I'd prefer not to use a while loop and realloc to manually construct the entire string, I mean there has to be a simpler way?
Something like this, may be?
FILE *stream;
char *contents;
fileSize = 0;
//Open the stream. Note "b" to avoid DOS/UNIX new line conversion.
stream = fopen(argv[1], "rb");
//Seek to the end of the file to determine the file size
fseek(stream, 0L, SEEK_END);
fileSize = ftell(stream);
fseek(stream, 0L, SEEK_SET);
//Allocate enough memory (add 1 for the \0, since fread won't add it)
contents = malloc(fileSize+1);
//Read the file
size_t size=fread(contents,1,fileSize,stream);
contents[size]=0; // Add terminating zero.
//Print it again for debugging
printf("Read %s\n", contents);
//Close the file
fclose(stream);
free(contents);
The function fread
will read from the stream and not terminate on end-of-line characters.
From the man
page, you have:
size_t fread(void *restrict ptr, size_t size, size_t nitems, FILE *restrict stream);
which reads in nitems of size size.
fread
reads all the files as-is:
if (fread(contents, 1, fileSize, stream) != fileSize) {
/* error occurred */
}
I've got this:
ssize_t filetomem(const char *filename, uint8_t **result)
{
ssize_t size = 0;
FILE *f = fopen(filename, "r");
if (f == NULL)
{
*result = NULL;
return -1;
}
fseek(f, 0, SEEK_END);
size = ftell(f);
fseek(f, 0, SEEK_SET);
*result = malloc(size);
if (size != fread(*result, sizeof(**result), size, f))
{
free(*result);
return -2;
}
fclose(f);
return size;
}
Meaning of return value:
- Positive or 0: successfully read the file
- minus one: couldn't open file (possibly no such file)
- minus two: fread() failed