UniversityofWashingtonComputerProgrammingI.pptVIP

11/29/98 ? 1996 UW CSE University of WashingtonComputer Programming I File Input/Output Overview Concepts External disk files Opening files for reading/writing File variables File I/O Closing Files Reading Textbook sec. 12.1 Overview Concepts External disk files Opening files for reading/writing File variables File I/O Closing Files Review: What is I/O? Files A file is a collection of data on disk Large volume of input data Large volume of output data More permanent storage of data Transfer to other programs Multiple simultaneous input and/or output streams DATA FILES Business Data: customer files, payroll files, … Scientific Data: weather data, environmental data, topographic maps, … Image Data: web images, satellite images, medical images, … Web Data: HTML, GIF, JPEG, PNG, XML, … Files A file is a collection of data on disk managed by the user and the operating system Permanent A file name is how the user and OS know the file follows OS naming rules Well look at using text files in a C program keyboard/screen are special cases input / output streams of characters Multiple streams can be used simultaneously In reality, stream flows through a buffer rather than directly into or out of variables. Files vs. File Variables Key idea A file is a collection of data on disk For our purposes, a sequence of characters But a C program can only operate directly on variables (data in main memory), so… Need to make a connection between the data on the disk and variables in main memory Files vs. File Variables A file variable is a data structure in the C program which represents the file Temporary: exists only when program runs There is a struct called FILE in stdio.h Details of the struct are private to the standard C I/O library routines Prototypes for I/O functions. Definitions of useful #define constants Example: EOF for End of File Definition of FILE struct to represent information about open files. File variables in C programs are pointers to a FIL