File I/O in Every Programming Language [closed]

Question

This has to be a common question that all programmers have from time to time. How do I read a line from a text file? Then the next question is always how do i write it back.

Of course most of you use a high level framework in day to day programming (which are fine to use in answers) but sometimes it's nice to know how to do it at a low level too.

I myself know how to do it in C, C++ and Objective-C, but it sure would be handy to see how it's done in all of the popular languages, if only to help us make a better decision about what language to do our file io in. In particular I think it would be interesting to see how its done in the string manipulation languages, like: python, ruby and of course perl.

So I figure here we can create a community resource that we can all star to our profiles and refer to when we need to do file I/O in some new language. Not to mention the exposure we will all get to languages that we don't deal with on a day to day basis.

This is how you need to answer:

1. Create a new text file called "fileio.txt"
2. Write the first line "hello" to the text file.
3. Append the second line "world" to the text file.
4. Read the second line "world" into an input string.
5. Print the input string to the console.

Clarification:

• You should show how to do this in one programming language per answer only.
• Assume that the text file doesn't exist beforehand
• You don't need to reopen the text file after writing the first line

No particular limit on the language. C, C++, C#, Java, Objective-C are all great.

If you know how to do it in Prolog, Haskell, Fortran, Lisp, or Basic then please go right ahead.

Answer 1

JavaScript - node.js

First, lots of nested callbacks.

var fs   = require("fs");
var sys  = require("sys");
var path = "fileio.txt";

fs.writeFile(path, "hello", function (error) {
    fs.open(path, "a", 0666, function (error, file) {
        fs.write(file, "\nworld", null, "utf-8", function () {
            fs.close(file, function (error) {
                fs.readFile(path, "utf-8", function (error, data) {
                    var lines = data.split("\n");
                    sys.puts(lines[1]);
                });
            });
        });
    });
});

A little bit cleaner:

var writeString = function (string, nextAction) {
    fs.writeFile(path, string, nextAction);
};

var appendString = function (string, nextAction) {
    return function (error, file) {
        fs.open(path, "a", 0666, function (error, file) {
            fs.write(file, string, null, "utf-8", function () {
                fs.close(file, nextAction);
            });
        });
    };
};

var readLine = function (index, nextAction) {
    return function (error) {
        fs.readFile(path, "utf-8", function (error, data) {
            var lines = data.split("\n");
            nextAction(lines[index]);
        });
    };
};

var writeToConsole = function (line) {
    sys.puts(line);
};

writeString("hello", appendString("\nworld", readLine(1, writeToConsole)));

Answer 2

Objective-C

NSFileHandle *fh = [NSFileHandle fileHandleForUpdatingAtPath:@"fileio.txt"];

[[NSFileManager defaultManager] createFileAtPath:@"fileio.txt" contents:nil attributes:nil];

[fh writeData:[@"hello" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
[fh writeData:[@"\nworld" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

NSArray *linesInFile = [[[NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:@"fileio.txt" 
                                             encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding 
                                                error:nil] stringByStandardizingPath] 
                          componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n"];

NSLog(@"%@", [linesInFile objectAtIndex:1]);

Answer 3

Ruby

PATH = 'fileio.txt'
File.open(PATH, 'w') { |file| file.puts "hello" }
File.open(PATH, 'a') { |file| file.puts "world" }
puts line = File.readlines(PATH).last

Answer 4

F#

let path = "fileio.txt"
File.WriteAllText(path, "hello")
File.AppendAllText(path, "\nworld")

let secondLine = File.ReadLines path |> Seq.nth 1
printfn "%s" secondLine

Answer 5

x86 Assembler (NASM) on Linux

I haven't touched asm in 7 years, so I had to use google a bit to hack this together, but still, it works ;) I know it's not 100% correct, but hey :D

OK, it doesn't work. sorry bout this. while it does print world in the end, it doesn't print it from the file, but from the ecx which is set on line 27.

section .data
hello db 'hello',10
helloLen equ $-hello
world db 'world',10
worldLen equ $-world
helloFile db 'hello.txt'

section .text
global _start

_start:
mov eax,8
mov ebx,helloFile
mov ecx,00644Q
int 80h

mov ebx,eax

mov eax,4
mov ecx, hello
mov edx, helloLen
int 80h

mov eax,4
mov ecx, world
mov edx, worldLen
int 80h

mov eax,6
int 80h

mov eax,5
mov ebx,helloFile
int 80h

mov eax,3
int 80h

mov eax,4
mov ebx,1
int 80h

xor ebx,ebx
mov eax,1
int 80h

References used: http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~if817/arquivos/asmtut/quickstart.html

http://bluemaster.iu.hio.no/edu/dark/lin-asm/syscalls.html

http://www.digilife.be/quickreferences/QRC/LINUX%20System%20Call%20Quick%20Reference.pdf

Answer 6

BASIC

I haven't used BASIC in almost 10 years, but this question gave me a reason to quickly brush up my knowledge. :)

OPEN "fileio.txt" FOR OUTPUT AS 1
PRINT #1, "hello"
PRINT #1, "world"
CLOSE 1

OPEN "fileio.txt" FOR INPUT AS 1
LINE INPUT #1, A$
LINE INPUT #1, A$
CLOSE 1

PRINT A$