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FOPEN(3)                 BSD Library Functions Manual                 FOPEN(3)

NAME
     fdopen, fopen, freopen -- stream open functions

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <stdio.h>

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

     FILE *
     fopen(const char *restrict filename, const char *restrict mode);

     FILE *
     freopen(const char *restrict filename, const char *restrict mode,
         FILE *restrict stream);

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

     The argument mode points to a string beginning with one of the following
     sequences (Additional characters may follow these sequences.):

     ``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 writing.  The file is created if it does not exist.  The
             stream is positioned at the end of the file.  Subsequent writes
             to the file will always end up at the then current end of file,
             irrespective of any intervening fseek(3) or similar.

     ``a+''  Open for reading and writing.  The file is created if it does not
             exist.  The stream is positioned at the end of the file.  Subse-quent Subsequent
             quent writes to the file will always end up at the then current
             end of file, irrespective of any intervening fseek(3) or similar.

     The mode string can also include the letter ``b'' either as a third char-acter character
     acter or as a character between the characters in any of the two-charac-ter two-character
     ter strings described above.  This is strictly for compatibility with
     ISO/IEC 9899:1990 (``ISO C90'') and has no effect; the ``b'' is ignored.

     Finally, as an extension to the standards (and thus may not be portable),
     mode string may end with the letter ``x'', which insists on creating a
     new file when used with ``w'' or ``a''.  If path exists, then an error is
     returned (this is the equivalent of specifying O_EXCL with open(2)).

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

     Reads and writes may be intermixed on read/write streams in any order,
     and do not require an intermediate seek as in previous versions of stdio.
     This is not portable to other systems, however; ANSI C requires that a
     file positioning function intervene between output and input, unless an
     input operation encounters end-of-file.

     The fdopen() function associates a stream with the existing file descrip-tor, descriptor,
     tor, fildes.  The mode of the stream must be compatible with the mode of
     the file descriptor.  When the stream is closed via fclose(3), fildes is
     closed also.

     The freopen() function opens the file whose name is the string pointed to
     by filename 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.

     If the filename argument is NULL, freopen() attempts to re-open the file
     associated with stream with a new mode.  The new mode must be compatible
     with the mode that the stream was originally opened with:

           oo   Streams originally opened with mode ``r'' can only be reopened
               with that same mode.

           oo   Streams originally opened with mode ``a'' can be reopened with
               the same mode, or mode ``w''.

           oo   Streams originally opened with mode ``w'' can be reopened with
               the same mode, or mode ``a''.

           oo   Streams originally opened with mode ``r+'', ``w+'', or ``a+''
               can be reopened with any mode.

     The primary use of the freopen() function is to change the file associ-ated associated
     ated with a standard text stream (stderr, stdin, or stdout).

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

ERRORS
     [EINVAL]           The mode argument 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).

SEE ALSO
     open(2), fclose(3), fileno(3), fseek(3), funopen(3)

STANDARDS
     The fopen() and freopen() functions conform to ISO/IEC 9899:1990
     (``ISO C90'').  The fdopen() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988
     (``POSIX.1'').

BSD                            January 26, 2003                            BSD