ftell

 

C

Language

Standard Library

Type support

Dynamic memory management

Error handling

Program utilities

Date and time utilities

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Input/output support

Localization support

Thread support (C11)

Atomic operations (C11)

 

File input/output

Functions
File access
fopen freopen fclose fflush	fwide setbuf setvbuf
Direct input/output
fread
fwrite
Unformatted input/output
fgetc fgets fputc fputs getchar gets putchar puts ungetc	fgetwc fgetws fputwc fputws getwchar putwchar ungetwc
Formatted input/output
scanffscanfsscanf vscanfvfscanfvsscanf (C99)(C99)(C99) printffprintfsprintfsnprintf (C99) vprintfvfprintfvsprintfvsnprintf (C99)	wscanffwscanfswscanf vwscanfvfwscanfvswscanf (C99)(C99)(C99) wprintffwprintfswprintf vwprintfvfwprintfvswprintf
File positioning
ftell
fgetpos
fseek
fsetpos
rewind
Error handling
clearerr
feof
ferror
perror
Operations on files
remove
rename
tmpfile
tmpnam

 

Defined in header <stdio.h>
long ftell( FILE *stream );

Returns the file position indicator for the file stream stream.

If the stream is open in binary mode, the value obtained by this function is the number of bytes from the beginning of the file.

If the stream is open in text mode, the value returned by this function is unspecified and is only meaningful as the input to fseek().

Parameters

stream

-

file stream to examine

Return value

File position indicator on success or EOF if failure occurs.

On error, the errno variable is set to implementation-defined positive value.

Example

ftell with error checking

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    /* Prepare an array of f-p values. */
    #define SIZE 5
    double A[SIZE] = {1.,2.,3.,4.,5.};
    /* Write array to a file. */
    FILE * fp = fopen("test.bin", "wb");
    fwrite(A,sizeof(double),SIZE,fp);
    fclose (fp);
 
    /* Read the f-p values into array B. */
    double B[SIZE];
    fp = fopen("test.bin","rb");
    long int pos = ftell(fp);   /* position indicator at start of file */
    if (pos == -1L)
    {
       perror("ftell()");
       fprintf(stderr,"ftell() failed in file %s at line # %d\n", __FILE__,__LINE__-4);
       exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
    printf("%ld\n", pos);
 
    int ret_code = fread(B,sizeof(double),1,fp);   /* read one f-p value */
    pos = ftell(fp);   /* position indicator after reading one f-p value */
    if (pos == -1L)
    {
       perror("ftell()");
       fprintf(stderr,"ftell() failed in file %s at line # %d\n", __FILE__,__LINE__-4);
       exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
    printf("%ld\n", pos);
    printf("%.1f\n", B[0]);   /* print one f-p value */
 
    return EXIT_SUCCESS; 
}

Output:

0
8
1.0

See also

fgetpos	gets the file position indicator (function)
fseek	moves the file position indicator to a specific location in a file (function)
fsetpos	moves the file position indicator to a specific location in a file (function)
C++ documentation for ftell