Question

I’m getting a very strange error while trying to read from a simple text file with c fread() call.
I made a very simple program to show that error:

int main(int argc ,char ** argv) {
  FILE* fh = fopen("adult.txt","r");
  if(fh==NULL){
    printf("error opening file\n");
    exit(0);
  }

  int s = 1000;
  printf("cur before=%d\n",ftell(fh));
  char* b = malloc (sizeof(char)*s);
  int k =fread(b,sizeof(char),s,fh);
  printf("cur after reading %d bytes =%d\n",k,ftell(fh));

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

And what I get as output:

cur before=0
cur after reading 1000 bytes =1007

Is that normal? fread return the number ‘1000’ but the cursor (with ftell()) shows 1007 and any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

That’s normal.

'\n' can be represented with two characters, so there is the skew you are getting.

If you don’t want that to happen, open the finaly in binary mode.