Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!att!pegasus!psrc
From: psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: HELP need in C (turbo c, fopen problem)
Summary: You're missing the point of a FILE*
Message-ID: <2829@pegasus.ATT.COM>
Date: 26 Apr 89 01:05:06 GMT
References: <353@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 28

In article <353@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu>, packer@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu
(Michael A Packer) writes:
> i am trying to open a file.  When i open the file my filepointer is 
> being returned (not null).  When i look at what fp is pointing to
> there is garbage in the "buffer" and "curp" as declared by FILE.

A draft of X3J11/88-001 (the ANSI C standard) says:
> FILE . . . is an object type capable of recording all the information
> needed to control a stream, including its file position indicator, a
> pointer to its associated buffer, an error indicator that records
> whether a read/write error has occurred, and an end-of-file indicator
> that records whether the end of the file has been reached.
(section 4.9.1, page 121 of draft issued May 13, 1988)

Michael, a FILE is an abstract data type.  No one, not Borland, not the
ANSI C committee, makes any promises about any of the fields in this
structure, or even that a FILE is a structure!  If your program is
clearly broken (and you can tell that from some later, purely external
behavior), then look at what's broken.  The fields of a FILE might not
be set at open time; you may have to wait until the first write for
them to be initialized.  But why are you bothering?

> michael packer, packer@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu, un027661@wvnvaxb.wvnet.edu
> {allegra,bellcore,ihpn4!cadre,decvax!idis,psuvax1}!pitt!wvucsa!packer

Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories
att!pegasus!psrc, psrc@pegasus.att.com, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm
I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind.