The Windows Disk Management 10

 

 

 

Opening a File for Reading or Writing

 

The CreateFile() function can create a new file or open an existing file. You must specify the file name, creation instructions, and other attributes. When an application creates a new file, the operating system adds it to the specified directory.

 

 

Example: Open a File for Writing

 

The following example uses CreateFile() to create a new file and open it for writing and WriteFile() to write a simple string synchronously to the file. A subsequent call to open this file with CreateFile() will fail until the handle is closed.

 

#include <windows.h>

#include <stdio.h>

 

void main(int argc, CHAR *argv[])

{

    HANDLE hFile;

    char DataBuffer[] = This is a test string to be written.;

    DWORD dwBytesToWrite = (DWORD)strlen(DataBuffer);

    DWORD dwBytesWritten = 0;

 

    printf(\n);

    // Verify the argument

    if(argc != 2)

    {

        printf(ERROR:\tIncorrect number of arguments!\n\n);

        printf(%s <file_name>\n, argv[0]);

        return;

    }

 

    hFile = CreateFile(argv[1],                // file name to write

                       GENERIC_WRITE,          // open for writing

                       0,                      // do not share

                       NULL,                   // default security

                       CREATE_ALWAYS,          // overwrite existing

                       FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,  // normal file

                       NULL);                  // no attr. template

 

    if (hFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)

    {

        printf(Could not open %s file, error %d\n, argv[1], GetLastError());

        return;

    }

 

    printf(Writing %d bytes to %s.\n, dwBytesToWrite, argv[1]);

 

    // This loop would most likely never repeat for this synchronous example.

    // However, during asynchronous writes the system buffer may become full,

    // requiring additional writes until the entire buffer is written

    while (dwBytesWritten < dwBytesToWrite)

    {

        if( FALSE == WriteFile(hFile,           // open file handle

                               DataBuffer + dwBytesWritten,     // start of data to write

                               dwBytesToWrite - dwBytesWritten, // number of bytes to write

                               &dwBytesWritten, // number of bytes that were written

                               NULL)            // no overlapped structure

          )

        {

            printf(Could not write to %s file, error %d\n, argv[1], GetLastError());

            CloseHandle(hFile);

            return;

        }

    }

 

    printf(Wrote %d bytes to %s successfully.\n, dwBytesWritten, argv[1]);

 

    CloseHandle(hFile);

}

 

To test this program, we copy the executable to C: and create two files named testing.txt and testing.doc. We put both files at C:

 

 

The file to be opened and written can have a relative path as shown in the following screenshot.

 

 

The Unicode version can be found in the download page (project samples).

 

 

 

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