C fseek() function

Last update on September 20 2022 12:34:31 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

C library function - fseek()

The fseek() function change the current file position that is associated with stream to a new location within the file.

Syntax:

int fseek(FILE *stream, long int offset, int whence)

fseek() Parameters:

Name	Description	Required /Optional
stream	Identifies an address for a file descriptor, which is an area of memory associated with an input or output stream.	Required
offset	Number of bytes to offset from whence	Required
whence	The new position, measured in bytes from the beginning of the file, shall be obtained by adding offset to the position specified by whence.	Required

Return value from fseek()

The fseek() function shall return 0 if they succee,d otherwise, they shall return -1 and set errno to indicate the error.

Example: fseek() function

Following function opens a file test.txt for reading. After performing input operations,fseek() moves the file pointer to the beginning of the file.

#include <stdio.h>
#define  MAX_LEN  10
 
int main(void)
{
   FILE *stream;
   char buffer[MAX_LEN + 1];
   int  result;
   int  i;
   char ch;
 
   stream = fopen("test.txt", "r");
   for (i = 0; (i  < (sizeof(buffer)-1) &&
       ((ch = fgetc(stream)) != EOF) && (ch != '\n')); i++)
          buffer[i] = ch;
 
   result = fseek(stream, 0L, SEEK_SET);  /* moves the pointer to the */
                                          /* beginning of the file    */
   if (result == 0)
      printf("Pointer successfully moved to the beginning of the file.\n");
   else
      printf("Failed moving pointer to the beginning of the file.\n");
}

Output:

Pointer successfully moved to the beginning of the file.

C Programming Code Editor:

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