Data File Handling through C

Creating a data file

A data file must be created before it can be processed.

A stream-oriented data file can be created in two ways. One is to create the file directly, using a text editor or a word processor.

The other is to write a program that enters information into the computer and than writes it out to the data file.

Unformatted data files can only be created with such specially written programs.

Example:

Reading a data file-

The following program will read a line of text from a data file on a character by character basis, and display the text on the screen.

The program makes use of the library functions get and putchar to read and display the data.

An example program to read a line of text from a data file and display it on the screen:

Data file consisting entirely of strings can often be created and read more casually with programs that utilize special string-oriented library functions.

Some commonly used functions of this type are gets, puts, fgets and fputs.

The functions gets and puts read or write strings to or from the standard output devices, whereas fgets and fputs exchange strings with data files.