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FOPEN(3)                   Linux Programmer's Manual                  FOPEN(3)

NAME
       fopen, fdopen, freopen - stream open functions

SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdio.h>

       FILE *fopen(const char *path, const char *mode);

       FILE *fdopen(int fd, const char *mode);

       FILE *freopen(const char *path, const char *mode, FILE *stream);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       fdopen(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 1 || _XOPEN_SOURCE || _POSIX_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION
       The fopen() function opens the file whose name is the string pointed to
       by path and associates a stream with it.

       The argument mode points to a string beginning with one of the  follow-
       ing sequences (possibly followed by additional characters, as described
       below):

       r      Open text file for reading.  The stream  is  positioned  at  the
              beginning of the file.

       r+     Open  for  reading and writing.  The stream is positioned at the
              beginning of the file.

       w      Truncate file to zero length or create text  file  for  writing.
              The stream is positioned at the beginning of the file.

       w+     Open  for  reading  and writing.  The file is created if it does
              not exist, otherwise it is truncated.  The stream is  positioned
              at the beginning of the file.

       a      Open  for  appending (writing at end of file).  The file is cre-
              ated if it does not exist.  The stream is positioned at the  end
              of the file.

       a+     Open  for  reading  and appending (writing at end of file).  The
              file is created if it does not exist.  The initial file position
              for  reading  is  at  the  beginning  of the file, but output is
              always appended to the end of the file.

       The mode string can also include the letter 'b' either as a last  char-
       acter  or as a character between the characters in any of the two-char-
       acter strings described above.  This is strictly for compatibility with
       C89  and has no effect; the 'b' is ignored on all POSIX conforming sys-
       tems, including Linux.  (Other systems may treat text files and  binary
       files  differently, and adding the 'b' may be a good idea if you do I/O
       to a binary file and expect that your program may be ported to non-UNIX
       environments.)

       See NOTES below for details of glibc extensions for mode.

       Any  created files will have mode S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IWGRP
       | S_IROTH | S_IWOTH (0666), as modified by the  process's  umask  value
       (see umask(2)).

       Reads  and writes may be intermixed on read/write streams in any order.
       Note that ANSI C requires that a file  positioning  function  intervene
       between  output and input, unless an input operation encounters end-of-
       file.  (If this condition is not met, then a read is allowed to  return
       the result of writes other than the most recent.)  Therefore it is good
       practice (and  indeed  sometimes  necessary  under  Linux)  to  put  an
       fseek(3)  or  fgetpos(3) operation between write and read operations on
       such a stream.   This  operation  may  be  an  apparent  no-op  (as  in
       fseek(..., 0L, SEEK_CUR) called for its synchronizing side effect).

       Opening a file in append mode (a as the first character of mode) causes
       all subsequent write operations to this stream to occur at end-of-file,
       as if preceded the call:

           fseek(stream, 0, SEEK_END);

       The  fdopen()  function  associates  a  stream  with  the existing file
       descriptor, fd.  The mode of the stream (one of the values  "r",  "r+",
       "w",  "w+",  "a",  "a+")  must  be compatible with the mode of the file
       descriptor.  The file position indicator of the new stream  is  set  to
       that  belonging  to  fd,  and  the error and end-of-file indicators are
       cleared.  Modes "w" or "w+" do not cause truncation of the  file.   The
       file  descriptor is not dup'ed, and will be closed when the stream cre-
       ated by fdopen() is closed.  The  result  of  applying  fdopen()  to  a
       shared memory object is undefined.

       The  freopen() function opens the file whose name is the string pointed
       to by path and associates the stream pointed to by stream with it.  The
       original  stream  (if  it exists) is closed.  The mode argument is used
       just as in the fopen() function.  The  primary  use  of  the  freopen()
       function  is  to change the file associated with a standard text stream
       (stderr, stdin, or stdout).

RETURN VALUE
       Upon successful completion fopen(), fdopen()  and  freopen()  return  a
       FILE pointer.  Otherwise, NULL is returned and errno is set to indicate
       the error.

ERRORS
       EINVAL The  mode  provided  to  fopen(),  fdopen(),  or  freopen()  was
              invalid.

       The  fopen(),  fdopen()  and  freopen() functions may also fail and set
       errno for any of the errors specified for the routine malloc(3).

       The fopen() function may also fail and set errno for any of the  errors
       specified for the routine open(2).

       The fdopen() function may also fail and set errno for any of the errors
       specified for the routine fcntl(2).

       The freopen() function may also fail and  set  errno  for  any  of  the
       errors specified for the routines open(2), fclose(3) and fflush(3).

CONFORMING TO
       The fopen() and freopen() functions conform to C89.  The fdopen() func-
       tion conforms to POSIX.1-1990.

NOTES
   Glibc notes
       The GNU C library allows the following extensions for the string speci-
       fied in mode:

       c (since glibc 2.3.3)
              Do  not  make  the  open operation, or subsequent read and write
              operations, thread cancellation points.  This  flag  is  ignored
              for fdopen().

       e (since glibc 2.7)
              Open  the  file  with  the O_CLOEXEC flag.  See open(2) for more
              information.  This flag is ignored for fdopen().

       m (since glibc 2.3)
              Attempt to access the file using mmap(2), rather than I/O system
              calls   (read(2),  write(2)).   Currently,  use  of  mmap(2)  is
              attempted only for a file opened for reading.

       x      Open the file exclusively (like the O_EXCL flag of open(2)).  If
              the  file  already exists, fopen() fails, and sets errno to EEX-
              IST.  This flag is ignored for fdopen().

       In addition to the above characters, fopen() and freopen() support  the
       following syntax in mode:

           ,ccs=string

       The  given string is taken as the name of a coded character set and the
       stream is marked as  wide-oriented.   Thereafter,  internal  conversion
       functions  convert  I/O  to  and from the character set string.  If the
       ,ccs=string syntax is not specified, then the wide-orientation  of  the
       stream is determined by the first file operation.  If that operation is
       a wide-character operation, the stream  is  marked  wide-oriented,  and
       functions to convert to the coded character set are loaded.

BUGS
       When  parsing for individual flag characters in mode (i.e., the charac-
       ters preceding the "ccs" specification), the  glibc  implementation  of
       fopen()  and freopen() limits the number of characters examined in mode
       to 7 (or, in glibc versions before 2.14, to 6, which was not enough  to
       include possible specifications such as "rb+cmxe").  The current imple-
       mentation of fdopen() parses at most 5 characters in mode.

SEE ALSO
       open(2), fclose(3), fileno(3), fmemopen(3), fopencookie(3)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.69 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of  the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest    version    of    this    page,    can     be     found     at
       http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU                               2012-04-22                          FOPEN(3)

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