Opening and closing files in C

 Syntax for opening a file:

File is opened with the following statements:

FILE *fp;

fp = fopen("file_name", "mode");

where fp is a file pointer, mode is the file opening mode(read, write or append) and file_name is the name of the file to be opened.

fopen() performs the following tasks for opening a file:

1. It searches for the specified file in the disk to open it. 
2. If the given file is available in disk, then the file will be moved to memory.  If not, NULL is returned to the file pointer.
3. It locates the character pointer to point to the first character of the file.

Syntax for closing a file:

File is closed using the following statement.

      fclose(file_pointer);

The above statement closes the file associated with the file pointer file_pointer.

Example program to illustrate opening and closing files in C

  #include <stdio.h>
  int main() {
        // file pointer => fp
        FILE *fp;
        char ch, str[100];
        // opening the file input.txt in write mode
        fp = fopen("input.txt", "w");
        while((ch = getchar()) != EOF) {
                fputc(ch, fp);
        }
        // closing the file
        fclose(fp);
        // opening input.txt in read mode
        printf("\n\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\n");
        printf("\tContents in input.txt\n");
        printf("~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\n");
        fp = fopen("input.txt", "r");
        while((ch = fgetc(fp)) != EOF) {
                fputc(ch, stdout);
        }
        // closing the file
        fclose(fp);
        return 0;
  }

  Output:

  jp@jp-VirtualBox:~/$ ./a.out   // writing below contents in input.txt
  hello world
  hello world
  hello world
  hello world

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
         Contents in input.txt
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  hello world
  hello world
  hello world
  hello world

In the above program, we have written "hello world" 4 times in input.txt and prints the contents of the same file in output screen.