Wikipedia:wikiProject C/stdio.h/fclose
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fclose is a C function belonging to the ANSI C standard library, and included in the file stdio.h. Its purpose is close a stream and all the structure associated with it. Notes that most of the time the stream is an open file. It has the following prototype:
int fclose(FILE *file_pointer)
It takes one argument: a pointer to the FILE structure of the stream to close, e.g.:
:fclose(my_file_pointer)
This line calls the function fclose to close the FILE stream structure pointed to by my_file_pointer.
The return value is an integer with the following signification:
- 0 (zero) : the stream was closed successfully;
- EOF : an error happened;
Note that one can check for the error number by using ''errno.h''.
Example usage
#include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { FILE *file_pointer; int i; file_pointer = fopen("myfile.txt","r"); fscanf(file_pointer, "%d", &i); printf("The integer is %d\n", i); fclose(file_pointer); return 0; }
The above program opens a file called myfile.txt and scans for an integer in it.