C in a Nutshell

Name

fgetc

Synopsis

Reads a character from a file

#include <stdio.h>
intfgetc( FILE *fp );

The fgetc() function reads the character at the current file position in the specified file, and increments the file position.

The return value of fgetc() has the type int. If the file position is at the end of the file, or if the end-of-file flag was already set, fgetc() returns EOF and sets the end-of-file flag. If you convert the function’s return value to char, you might no longer be able to distinguish a value of EOF from a valid character such as '\xFF'.

Example

FILE *fp;
int c;
char buffer[1024];
int i = 0;

/* ... Open input file ... */

while ( i < 1023 )
{
  c =fgetc( fp );       // Returns a character on success;
  if (c == EOF)          // EOF means either an error or end-of-file.
  {
    if (feof( fp ))
      fprintf( stderr, "End of input.\n" );
    else if ( ferror( fp ))
      fprintf( stderr, "Input error.\n" );
    clearerr( fp );      // Clear the file's error or EOF flag.
    break;
  }
  else
  {
    buffer[i++] = (char) c;  // Use value as char *after* checking for EOF.
  }
}
buffer[i] = '\0';        // Terminate string.

See Also

getc(), getchar(), putc(), fputc(), fgets(), fgetwc(), getwc()