Append a text to a beginning of a file in C does not work

Question

So the pseudo code is:

FIle existing = Read whole content of file.

String newcontent = "Blah Blah This is first line" + existing

f.write(newcontent);

The actual code is

void Prepend(char *string, char *file_name)
{   

    char buf[100];
    FILE *fp1, *fp2;
    Append(string, "temp_file");
    
    fp1 = fopen(file_name, "a+");
    fp2 = fopen("temp_file", "a+");
    
    if (!fp1 && !fp2) {
        printf("Unable to open/"
               "detect file(s)\n");
        exit(1);
    }
 
    fprintf(fp2, "\n");
 

    while (!feof(fp1)) {
        fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), fp1);
    }
 
    rewind(fp2);
 

    while (!feof(fp2)) {
        fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), fp2);
    }
      fclose(fp1);
      fclose(fp2);
      remove(temp_file);
}

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

void Append(char *string, char *file_name)

{   

    FILE *file = fopen(file_name, "a");
    
    if(file==NULL)
    {
        printf("Error opening file.");
    }
    else 
    {
    
        fputs(string, file);    
        
    }
    
    fclose(file);
}

I know there is a way with fseek maybe and other pointer related stuff, but I thought it would be better and faster for me to go with the "easy way" and just make a new temp file and delete it right afterwards.

Well, it also doesn't work.

Answer 1

Here a little example, using only two instead of three files.

void prepend(const char *filename, const char *str)
{
    // open the orig file (read only)
    FILE *orig = fopen(filename, "r");

    // open tmp file (read / write)
    FILE *tmp = fopen("temp_file", "w+");

    // write string into tmp file (prepend)
    fwrite(str, 1, strlen(str), tmp);

    // file size of orig
    fseek(orig, 0L, SEEK_END);
    long orig_size = ftell(orig);
    rewind(orig); // set pos to 0

    // transfer bytes from orig to tmp (append)
    char *buf = malloc(orig_size);
    fread(buf, 1, orig_size, orig);
    fwrite(buf, 1, orig_size, tmp);
    free(buf);

    // close orig and delete it
    fclose(orig);
    remove(filename);

    // close and rename tmp file as orig
    fclose(tmp);
    rename("temp_file", filename);
}

Note: To keep things short, no error checking involved.

Answer 2

since you're using a temporary file, a secondary buffer should not be required, just append the text, then move the old file contents into the new one.

A few things you should lookout for,

• if (!fp1 && !fp2) is only true if both files failed to be opened,its better to check the results individually so we know where we failed. You could have replaced && with || but it will be ambiguous why it failed unless you re-check the file pointer values.
• It seems you were never writing the data from fp1 into fp2 I only see calls to fgets() , you read fp1 into buf then you read fp2 into buf , doing nothing with the data both times. If the files are larger than 100 bytes you'll end up with the last 100 or less bytes of data being stored in buf.
• It's not necessarily the worst thing, but it is good practice to only open files with the permissions you require. opening a file you only need to read from in 'a+' mode is kind of odd
• before creating new files its a good idea to check that a file doesn't already exist by that name. You might be better off to create the file in the system's temporary directory or a dedicated tmp dir for your program. Using a unique string for it's name is also a good idea. perhaps something like "[my prog]-[original file name]-[.tmp]" instead of such a general name.

A short example of a method that should work, with error checking (not necessarily the best error checking but gives you an idea where errors can occur):

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>

int Prepend(char *string, char *file_name)
{
    FILE *fp1 = NULL, *fp2 = NULL;
    struct stat fs;
    if (stat("temp_file", &fs) == 0) {
        printf("Error, there is already a file named \"temp_file\" in the current working directory\n");
        return -1;
    }
    if ((fp1 = fopen(file_name, "r")) == NULL) {
        printf("Error : %s\n", strerror(errno));
        printf("Failed to Open file %s\n", file_name);
        return -1;
    }
    if ((fp2 = fopen("temp_file", "w")) == NULL {
        printf("Error : %s\n", strerror(errno));
        printf("Unable to create Temporary file\n");
        fclose(fp1);
        return -1;
    }
    if (fputs("Prepended String\n", fp2) == EOF) {
        printf("Failed to write string to file\n");
        fclose(fp1);
        fclose(fp2);
        if (remove("temp_file") != 0)
            printf("Error : %s, while removing temp_file\n", strerror(errno));
        return -1;
    }
    int c;
    while((c = fgetc(fp1)) != EOF) {
        if(fputc(c, fp2) == EOF) {
            printf("Error while transfering data from %s to %s\n", file_name, "temp_file");
            fclose(fp1);
            fclose(fp2);
            if (remove("temp_file") != 0)
                printf("Error : %s, while removing temp_file\n", strerror(errno));

            return -1;
        }
    }
    fclose(fp1);
    if (remove(file_name) != 0) {
        printf("Error : %s, while removing %s\n", strerror(errno), file_name);
        fclose(fp2);
        return -1;
    }


    fclose(fp2);
    if (rename("temp_file", file_name) != 0) {
        printf("Error : %s, while renaming temp_file\n", strerror(errno));
        return -1;
    }
    return 0;
}

fclose() can also return EOF on error and errno is set to indicate the error. However, any further access (including another call to fclose()) to the stream results in undefined behavior. so you can print the error but there isn't much you can do about it.