Position the file pointer in C | Moving File Pointer in C To Specific Location | fseek() Function Use Details | rewind() Function in C | Parameters of rewind, fseek function in C

Position the file pointer in C | Moving File Pointer in C To Specific Location | fseek() Function Use Details | rewind() Function in C | Parameters of rewind, fseek function in C 

 

Well Friends, Lets check out the File Pointers & its related Functions like FSEEK, SEEK_CUR, REWIND etc. One of the attributes of an open file is its file position that keeps track of where in the file the next character is to be read or written. In the GNU system, and all POSIX.1 systems, the file position is simply an integer representing the number of bytes from the beginning of the file.

The file position is normally set to the beginning of the file when it is opened, and each time a character is read or written, the file position is incremented. In other words, access to the file is normally sequential. Ordinary files permit read or write operations at any position within the file. Some other kinds of files may also permit this. Files which do permit this are sometimes referred to as random-access files. You can change the file position using the fseek function on a stream or the lseek function on a file descriptor. If you try to change the file position on a file that doesn't support random access, you get the ESPIPE error. Streams and descriptors that are opened for append access are treated specially for output: output to such files is always appended sequentially to the end of the file, regardless of the file position. However, the file position is still used to control where in the file reading is done. If you think about it, you'll realize that several programs can read a given file at the same time. In order for each program to be able to read the file at its own pace, each program must have its own file pointer, which is not affected by anything the other programs do.

int fseek(FILE *stream, long offset, int whence);
void rewind(FILE *stream);

When doing reads and writes to a file, the OS keeps track of where you are in the file using a counter generically known as the file pointer. You can reposition the file pointer to a different point in the file using the fseek() call. Think of it as a way to randomly access you file.
The first argument is the file in question, obviously. offset argument is the position that you want to seek to, and whence is what that offset is relative to.
Of course, you probably like to think of the offset as being from the beginning of the file. I mean, "Seek to position 3490, that should be 3490 bytes from the beginning of the file." Well, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. Imagine the power you're wielding here. Try to command your enthusiasm.
You can set the value of whence to one of three things:

SEEK_SET

offset is relative to the beginning of the file. This is probably what you had in mind anyway, and is the most commonly used value for whence.

SEEK_CUR

offset is relative to the current file pointer position. So, in effect, you can say, "Move to my current position plus 30 bytes," or, "move to my current position minus 20 bytes."

SEEK_END

offset is relative to the end of the file. Just like SEEK_SET except from the other end of the file. Be sure to use negative values for offset if you want to back up from the end of the file, instead of going past the end into oblivion.

Speaking of seeking off the end of the file, can you do it? Sure thing. In fact, you can seek way off the end and then write a character; the file will be expanded to a size big enough to hold a bunch of zeros way out to that character.
Now that the complicated function is out of the way, what's this rewind() that I briefly mentioned? It repositions the file pointer at the beginning of the file:

fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_SET); // same as rewind() 

rewind(fp); // same as fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_SET)

What it fseek Function Returns??

Well fseek(), on success zero is returned; -1 is returned on failure. 

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