fread

 

C

Language

Standard Library

Type support

Dynamic memory management

Error handling

Program utilities

Date and time utilities

Strings library

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Input/output support

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Thread support (C11)

Atomic operations (C11)

 

File input/output

Functions
File access
fopen freopen fclose fflush	fwide setbuf setvbuf
Direct input/output
fread
fwrite
Unformatted input/output
fgetc fgets fputc fputs getchar gets putchar puts ungetc	fgetwc fgetws fputwc fputws getwchar putwchar ungetwc
Formatted input/output
scanffscanfsscanf vscanfvfscanfvsscanf (C99)(C99)(C99) printffprintfsprintfsnprintf (C99) vprintfvfprintfvsprintfvsnprintf (C99)	wscanffwscanfswscanf vwscanfvfwscanfvswscanf (C99)(C99)(C99) wprintffwprintfswprintf vwprintfvfwprintfvswprintf
File positioning
ftell
fgetpos
fseek
fsetpos
rewind
Error handling
clearerr
feof
ferror
perror
Operations on files
remove
rename
tmpfile
tmpnam

 

Defined in header <stdio.h>
size_t fread( void          *buffer, size_t size, size_t count,               FILE          *stream );		(until C99)
size_t fread( void *restrict buffer, size_t size, size_t count,               FILE *restrict stream );		(since C99)

Reads up to count objects into the array buffer from the given input stream stream as if by calling fgetc size times for each object, and storing the results, in the order obtained, into the successive positions of buffer, which is reinterpreted as an array of unsigned char. The file position indicator for the stream is advanced by the number of characters read.

If an error occurs, the resulting value of the file position indicator for the stream is indeterminate. If a partial element is read, its value is indeterminate

Parameters

buffer	-	pointer to the array where the read objects are stored
size	-	size of each object in bytes
count	-	the number of the objects to be read
stream	-	the stream to read

Return value

Number of objects read successfully, which may be less than count if an error or end-of-file condition occurs.

If size or count is zero, fread returns zero and performs no other action.

Example

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
 
enum { SIZE = 5 };
int main(void)
{
    double a[SIZE] = {1.,2.,3.,4.,5.};
    FILE *fp = fopen("test.bin", "wb"); // must use binary mode
    fwrite(a, sizeof *a, SIZE, fp); // writes an array of doubles
    fclose(fp);
 
    double b[SIZE];
    fp = fopen("test.bin","rb");
    size_t ret_code = fread(b, sizeof *b, SIZE, fp); // reads an array of doubles
    if(ret_code == SIZE) {
        puts("Array read successfully, contents: ");
        for(int n = 0; n < SIZE; ++n) printf("%f ", b[n]);
        putchar('\n');
    } else { // error handling
       if (feof(fp))
          printf("Error reading test.bin: unexpected end of file\n");
       else if (ferror(fp)) {
           perror("Error reading test.bin");
       }
    }
}

Output:

1.000000 2.000000 3.000000 4.000000 5.000000

See also

scanffscanfsscanf	reads formatted input from stdin, a file stream or a buffer (function)
fgets	gets a character string from a file stream (function)
fwrite	writes to a file (function)
C++ documentation for fread