Question

My code currently looks something like this (these steps splitted into multiple functions):

/* open file */
FILE *file = fopen(filename, "r+");

if(!file) {

  /* read the file */

  /* modify the data */

  /* truncate file (how does this work?)*/

  /* write new data into file */

  /* close file */
  fclose(file);
}

I know I could open the file with in "w" mode, but I don’t want to do this in this case. I know there is a function ftruncate in unistd.h/sys/types.h, but I don’t want to use these functions my code should be highly portable (on windows too).

Is there a possibility to clear a file without closing/reopen it?

Answer 1

With standard C, the only way is to reopen the file in “w+” mode every time you need to truncate. You can use freopen() for this. “w+” will continue to allow reading from it, so there’s no need to close and reopen yet again in “r+” mode. The semantics of “w+” are:

Open for reading and writing. The file is created if it does not exist, otherwise it is truncated. The stream is positioned at the beginning of the file.

(Taken from the fopen(3) man page.)

You can pass a NULL pointer as the filename parameter when using freopen():

my_file = freopen(NULL, "w+", my_file);

If you don’t need to read from the file anymore at all, when “w” mode will also do just fine.