- C Programming Examples
- C Programming Examples
- C Print Hello World
- C Get Input from User
- C Print Integer
- C Add Two Numbers
- C Add Subtract Multiply Divide
- C Add n Numbers
- C Area Perimeter of Square
- C Area Perimeter of Rectangle
- C Area Circum of Circle
- C Fahrenheit to Celsius
- C Celsius to Fahrenheit
- C Inches to Centimeters
- C Kilogram to Gram
- C Reverse a Number
- C Swap Two Numbers
- C Interchange Numbers
- C Print ASCII Value
- C Print Fibonacci Series
- C Check Palindrome or Not
- C Check Armstrong or Not
- C Find Armstrong Numbers
- C Find nCr and nPr
- C Find Profit Loss
- C Sum of their Square
- C First & Last Digit Sum
- C Sum of All Digit
- C Product of All Digit
- C Print Total Digit in Number
- C Check Perfect Number
- C Find Basic Gross Salary
- C Round Number to Integer
- C Print Series upto n Term
- C Find Factors of Number
- C if-else & Loop Programs
- C Check Even or Odd
- C Check Prime or Not
- C Check Alphabet or Not
- C Check Vowel or Not
- C Check Leap Year or Not
- C Is Reverse Equal Original
- C Make Calculator
- C Add Digits of Number
- Count Positive Negative Zero
- C Largest of Two Numbers
- C Largest of Three Numbers
- C Smallest of Two Numbers
- C Smallest of Three Numbers
- C Find Factorial of Number
- C Find LCM & HCF
- C Find LCM of n Numbers
- C Find HCF of n Numbers
- C Find Arithmetic Mean
- C Find Average, Percentage
- C Find Student Grade
- C Print Table of Number
- C Print Prime Numbers
- C Find Discount Purchase
- C Calculate Parcel Charge
- C Calculate Wage of Labor
- C Print Phone Bill
- C Conversion programs
- C Decimal to Binary
- C Decimal to Octal
- C Decimal to Hexadecimal
- C Binary to Decimal
- C Binary to Octal
- C Binary to Hexadecimal
- C Octal to Decimal
- C Octal to Binary
- C Octal to Hexadecimal
- C Hexadecimal to Decimal
- C Hexadecimal to Binary
- C Hexadecimal to Octal
- C Pattern Programs
- C Pattern Printing Programs
- C Print Diamond Pattern
- C Print Floyd's Triangle
- C Print Pascal's Triangle
- C Array Programs
- C 1D Array Programs
- C Linear Search
- C Binary Search
- C Largest Element in Array
- C Smallest Element in Array
- C Second Largest/Smallest
- C Count Even Odd
- C Array Element at Even
- C Array Element at Odd
- C Print Even Array Elements
- C Print Odd Array Elements
- C Sum/Product of Even/Odd
- C Reverse an Array
- C Insert Element in Array
- C Delete Element from Array
- C Merge Two Arrays
- C Bubble Sort
- C Selection Sort
- C Insertion Sort
- C Print Common Elements
- C 2D Array Programs
- C Add Two Matrices
- C Subtract Two Matrices
- C Transpose a Matrix
- C Multiply Two Matrices
- C Sum All Matrix Elements
- C Largest Element in Matrix
- C Print Row Column Total
- C 3D Array Programs
- C String Programs
- C Print String
- C Find Length of String
- C Compare Two String
- C Copy a String
- C Concatenate String
- C Reverse a String
- C Count Vowels Consonants
- C Replace Vowel in String
- C Delete Vowels from String
- C Delete Word from String
- C Frequency of Character
- C Count Word in String
- C Remove Spaces from String
- C Sort a String
- C Sort String in Alphabetical
- C Sort Words in Ascending
- C Sort Words in Descending
- C Uppercase to Lowercase
- C Lowercase to Uppercase
- C Swap Two Strings
- C Check Anagram or Not
- C Check Palindrome String
- C Print Number in Words
- C Print Successive Character
- C Character without Space
- C Remove Extra Spaces
- C File Programs
- C Read a File
- C Write Content to File
- C Read & Display File
- C Copy a File
- C Merge Two Files
- C Reverse File
- C Count All Character in File
- C List Files in Directory
- C Encrypt & Decrypt a File
- C Delete a File
- C Misc Programs
- Generate Random Numbers
- C Print Date Time
- C Print Message with Time
- C Get IP Address
- C Print Smiling face
- C Pass Array to Function
- Add Two Numbers using Pointer
- C Address of Variable
- C Shutdown Computer
- C Programming Tutorial
- C Tutorial
- C Programming Library
- C Standard Library
- C Programming Test
- C Programming Test
- Give Online Test
- All Test List
C Program to Read Content of a File and Display it
In this article, you will learn and get code to read a file and display its content on output using C program. The file must be present inside the current directory, the directory where your C programs are being saved.
Things to Do before Program
Before executing the program given below that reads and display a file, a file must be created. Therefore, a file was created as mentioned in previous program of Read a File, named codescracker.txt with following content:
Hello C This is a textual file The name of this file is codescracker.txt
This file must be saved in the folder where you are going to save the program given below. Because I'm going to save the program in c programs folder of Documents directory. Therefore, the file codescracker.txt was also saved here (as mentioned in previous program). Here is the snapshot of the folder c programs. See the textual file is available in this folder:
Read and Display File's Content in C
To read and display file's content in C programming, you have to first open that file by using fopen() function. This function takes two arguments, that are
- file name
- file opening mode
In file opening mode, we have to use r that tells the compiler to open the file in reading mode only. Now start reading the file's content and then display the content on output as shown in the program given below:
Following C program asks from user to enter the file name to read and display its content on the screen:
#include<stdio.h> #include<conio.h> int main() { char fname[20], str[500]; FILE *fp; printf("Enter the Name of File: "); gets(fname); fp = fopen(fname, "r"); if(fp==NULL) printf("Error Occurred while Opening the File!"); else { fscanf(fp, "%[^\0]", str); printf("\nContent of File is:\n\n"); printf("%s", str); } fclose(fp); getch(); return 0; }
This program was build and run under Code::Blocks IDE. Here is its sample run:
Now enter the name of file say codescracker.txt and press ENTER
key to see the content of this
file as shown in the snapshot given below:
Note - If you want to save this source code in the folder where the textual file gets created, then refer to previous program. There, you will get the complete detail
Note - The %[^\0], second argument of fscanf() function indicates to read the content of file until a null terminated character occurred. In other words, read all the content of file.
Note - Never forgot to close the file pointer using fclose() function, after the operation gets completed.
Display the Content of First Line Only
To display the content of first line only from the file that will be entered by user at run-time, here is the program:
#include<stdio.h> #include<conio.h> int main() { char fname[20], str[200]; FILE *fp; printf("Enter the Name of File: "); gets(fname); fp = fopen(fname, "r"); if(fp==NULL) printf("Error Occurred while Opening the File!"); else { fscanf(fp, "%[^\n]", str); printf("\nFile's Content at First Line:\n\n"); printf("%s", str); } fclose(fp); getch(); return 0; }
Here is the sample run:
As you can compare this program with very first program of this article. The only change is in the second parameter of fscanf() function. That is, we have placed \n in place of \0 to read the content of file until a new line character occurred, in place of null terminated character. Rest of the things are same.
The size of str gets decreased and initialized with 200 assuming that the characters present at first line of the file entered by user are not more than 200 characters.
Read and Print File's Content Character by Character
This program does the same job as of very first program of this article. But in place of reading the whole content at once using fscanf() function, here we have used the fgetc() function to read the content of file in character-by-character manner. That is, read first character and print it, then read second character and print it, and so on.
#include<stdio.h> #include<conio.h> int main() { char fname[20], ch; FILE *fp; printf("Enter the Name of File: "); gets(fname); fp = fopen(fname, "r"); if(fp==NULL) printf("Error Occurred while Opening the File!"); else { printf("\nFile's Content is:\n\n"); ch = fgetc(fp); while(ch!=EOF) { printf("%c", ch); ch = fgetc(fp); } } fclose(fp); getch(); return 0; }
Here is its sample run:
Note - The EOF (End-Of-File) indicates the end of file, that is no any character left inside the file.
Therefore, every time after reading the character and initializing it in ch variable, it gets compared with EOF. If the condition evaluates to be false, then print the value of ch and read next character. Again compares it with EOF. Continue the reading and printing operation of file's content until the value of ch becomes equal to EOF.
Same Program in Other Languages
« Previous Program Next Program »