C Read Text File

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to read from a text file line by line using standard I/O functions.

C Read Text File Steps

In order to read from a text file, you follow the steps below:

First, open the text file using the fopen() function.
Second, use the function fgets() to read text from the stream and store it as a string. The newline or EOF character makes the fgets() function stop reading so you can check the newline or EOF file character to read the whole line.
Third, close the text file using the fclose() function.

Below is the source code of reading a text file line by line and output it to the screen.

* File: main.c

* Author: zentut.com

* Description: Read text file line by line and output it to

* the screen.

#include <stdio.h>

#define MAXCHAR 1000

int main() {

FILE *fp;

char str[MAXCHAR];

char* filename = "c:\\temp\\test.txt";

fp = fopen(filename, "r");

if (fp == NULL){

printf("Could not open file %s",filename);

return 1;

}

while (fgets(str, MAXCHAR, fp) != NULL)

printf("%s", str);

fclose(fp);

return 0;

}

In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to read from a text file using C standard I/O function.