Question

consider the below code snippet.

{
....
FILE *fptr = fopen("file_that_does_not_exist","r");
...
}

here, if fopen fails, do we still need to call fclose() for some cleanup ??

Answer 1

Its simple friend, i mean just imagine…. Do you have to shutdown a computer even if it fails to boot up…. 😀

Just the same way you don’t need to
close a file which you actually never
opened.

Some extra tip : fclose is used just for the sake of freeing the file so that it could be used by some other application or module, as it is not a sharable resource.
Also, fclose means you now free the pointer you were using and can use it for any other file.