How can I get a file's size in C? [duplicate]
Question
Possible Duplicate:
How do you determine the size of a file in C?
How can I find out the size of a file I opened with an application written in C ?
I would like to know the size, because I want to put the content of the loaded file into a string, which I allocate using malloc()
. Just writing malloc(10000*sizeof(char));
is IMHO a bad idea.
Solution
You need to seek to the end of the file and then ask for the position:
fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_END);
sz = ftell(fp);
You can then seek back, e.g.:
fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_SET);
or (if seeking to go to the beginning)
rewind(fp);
OTHER TIPS
Using standard library:
Assuming that your implementation meaningfully supports SEEK_END:
fseek(f, 0, SEEK_END); // seek to end of file
size = ftell(f); // get current file pointer
fseek(f, 0, SEEK_SET); // seek back to beginning of file
// proceed with allocating memory and reading the file
Linux/POSIX:
You can use stat
(if you know the filename), or fstat
(if you have the file descriptor).
Here is an example for stat:
#include <sys/stat.h>
struct stat st;
stat(filename, &st);
size = st.st_size;
Win32:
You can use GetFileSize or GetFileSizeEx.
If you have the file descriptor fstat()
returns a stat structure which contain the file size.
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>
// fd = fileno(f); //if you have a stream (e.g. from fopen), not a file descriptor.
struct stat buf;
fstat(fd, &buf);
off_t size = buf.st_size;
I ended up just making a short and sweet fsize
function(note, no error checking)
int fsize(FILE *fp){
int prev=ftell(fp);
fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_END);
int sz=ftell(fp);
fseek(fp,prev,SEEK_SET); //go back to where we were
return sz;
}
It's kind of silly that the standard C library doesn't have such a function, but I can see why it'd be difficult as not every "file" has a size(for instance /dev/null
)
Have you considered not computing the file size and just growing the array if necessary? Here's an example (with error checking ommitted):
#define CHUNK 1024
/* Read the contents of a file into a buffer. Return the size of the file
* and set buf to point to a buffer allocated with malloc that contains
* the file contents.
*/
int read_file(FILE *fp, char **buf)
{
int n, np;
char *b, *b2;
n = CHUNK;
np = n;
b = malloc(sizeof(char)*n);
while ((r = fread(b, sizeof(char), CHUNK, fp)) > 0) {
n += r;
if (np - n < CHUNK) {
np *= 2; // buffer is too small, the next read could overflow!
b2 = malloc(np*sizeof(char));
memcpy(b2, b, n * sizeof(char));
free(b);
b = b2;
}
}
*buf = b;
return n;
}
This has the advantage of working even for streams in which it is impossible to get the file size (like stdin).
If you're on Linux, seriously consider just using the g_file_get_contents function from glib. It handles all the code for loading a file, allocating memory, and handling errors.
How to use lseek/fseek/stat/fstat to get filesize ?
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
void
fseek_filesize(const char *filename)
{
FILE *fp = NULL;
long off;
fp = fopen(filename, "r");
if (fp == NULL)
{
printf("failed to fopen %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_END) == -1)
{
printf("failed to fseek %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
off = ftell(fp);
if (off == (long)-1)
{
printf("failed to ftell %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("[*] fseek_filesize - file: %s, size: %ld\n", filename, off);
if (fclose(fp) != 0)
{
printf("failed to fclose %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
void
fstat_filesize(const char *filename)
{
int fd;
struct stat statbuf;
fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY, S_IRUSR | S_IRGRP);
if (fd == -1)
{
printf("failed to open %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (fstat(fd, &statbuf) == -1)
{
printf("failed to fstat %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("[*] fstat_filesize - file: %s, size: %lld\n", filename, statbuf.st_size);
if (close(fd) == -1)
{
printf("failed to fclose %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
void
stat_filesize(const char *filename)
{
struct stat statbuf;
if (stat(filename, &statbuf) == -1)
{
printf("failed to stat %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("[*] stat_filesize - file: %s, size: %lld\n", filename, statbuf.st_size);
}
void
seek_filesize(const char *filename)
{
int fd;
off_t off;
if (filename == NULL)
{
printf("invalid filename\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY, S_IRUSR | S_IRGRP);
if (fd == -1)
{
printf("failed to open %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
off = lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_END);
if (off == (off_t)-1)
{
printf("failed to lseek %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("[*] seek_filesize - file: %s, size: %lld\n", filename, off);
if (close(fd) == -1)
{
printf("failed to close %s\n", filename);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
int
main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
int i;
if (argc < 2)
{
printf("%s <file1> <file2>...\n", argv[0]);
exit(0);
}
for(i = 1; i < argc; i++)
{
seek_filesize(argv[i]);
stat_filesize(argv[i]);
fstat_filesize(argv[i]);
fseek_filesize(argv[i]);
}
return 0;
}
#include <stdio.h>
#define MAXNUMBER 1024
int main()
{
int i;
char a[MAXNUMBER];
FILE *fp = popen("du -b /bin/bash", "r");
while((a[i++] = getc(fp))!= 9)
;
a[i] ='\0';
printf(" a is %s\n", a);
pclose(fp);
return 0;
}
HTH