Correct way to read a text file into a buffer in C?

buffer, c, input

Solution

char source[1000000];

FILE *fp = fopen("TheFile.txt", "r");
if(fp != NULL)
{
    while((symbol = getc(fp)) != EOF)
    {
        strcat(source, &symbol);
    }
    fclose(fp);
}

There are quite a few things wrong with this code:

- It is very slow (you are extracting the buffer one character at a time).

- If the filesize is over `sizeof(source)`, this is prone to buffer overflows.

- Really, when you look at it more closely, this code should not work at all. As stated in the man pages:

The `strcat()` function appends a copy of the null-terminated string s2 to the end of the null-terminated string s1, then add a terminating `\0'.

You are appending a character (not a NUL-terminated string!) to a string that may or may not be NUL-terminated. The only time I can imagine this working according to the man-page description is if every character in the file is NUL-terminated, in which case this would be rather pointless. So yes, this is most definitely a terrible abuse of `strcat()`.

The following are two alternatives to consider using instead.

If you know the maximum buffer size ahead of time:

#include <stdio.h>
#define MAXBUFLEN 1000000

char source[MAXBUFLEN + 1];
FILE *fp = fopen("foo.txt", "r");
if (fp != NULL) {
    size_t newLen = fread(source, sizeof(char), MAXBUFLEN, fp);
    if ( ferror( fp ) != 0 ) {
        fputs("Error reading file", stderr);
    } else {
        source[newLen++] = '\0'; /* Just to be safe. */
    }

    fclose(fp);
}

Or, if you do not:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

char *source = NULL;
FILE *fp = fopen("foo.txt", "r");
if (fp != NULL) {
    /* Go to the end of the file. */
    if (fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_END) == 0) {
        /* Get the size of the file. */
        long bufsize = ftell(fp);
        if (bufsize == -1) { /* Error */ }

        /* Allocate our buffer to that size. */
        source = malloc(sizeof(char) * (bufsize + 1));

        /* Go back to the start of the file. */
        if (fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_SET) != 0) { /* Error */ }

        /* Read the entire file into memory. */
        size_t newLen = fread(source, sizeof(char), bufsize, fp);
        if ( ferror( fp ) != 0 ) {
            fputs("Error reading file", stderr);
        } else {
            source[newLen++] = '\0'; /* Just to be safe. */
        }
    }
    fclose(fp);
}

free(source); /* Don't forget to call free() later! */

Problem

I'm dealing with small text files that i want to read into a buffer while i process them, so i've come up with the following code: ``` ... char source[1000000]; FILE *fp = fopen("TheFile.txt", "r"); if(fp != NULL) { while((symbol = getc(fp)) != EOF) { strcat(source, &symbol); } fclose(fp); } ... ``` Is this the correct way of putting the contents of the file into the buffer or am i abusing `strcat()`? I then iterate through the buffer thus: ``` for(int x = 0; (c = source[x]) != '\0'; x++) { //Process chars } ```

Original source

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