Question

i have the following struct

struct
{
    char order;
    int row;
    int column;
    int length;
    char printChar;
}record;

and my file look’s like this

F
30
40
7
X

how can i use fread to store the file in the struct?
does my file appear correctly or should all the components need to be in one-line?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you’re asking if you can do

struct record r;
fread(file, &r, sizeof(r));

or are you forced to use

struct record r;
fread(file, &r.order, sizeof(r.order));

If this is your question, then the answer is: you have to read the fields one-by-one since there may be padding between struct members. Or, if you use a GNU-compatible compiler, you might instruct it not to include any padding by declaring your struct as “packed”:

struct record {
    // ...
} __attribute__((packed));

But this is not advised unless absolutely necessary (it’s not portable).

Also, is your file really a binary file? If not, you should pay attention to newline characters and converting the numbers from text to their actual numeric value.