fgets

Header: <stdio.h>

Reads at most count - 1 characters from the given file stream and stores them in the character array pointed to by str. Parsing stops if a newline character is found (in which case str will contain that newline character) or if end-of-file occurs. If bytes are read and no errors occur, writes a null character at the position immediately after the last character written to str.

# Declarations

char* fgets( char* str, int count, FILE* stream );

(until C99)

char* fgets( char* restrict str, int count, FILE* restrict stream );

(since C99)

# Parameters

str: pointer to an element of a char array
count: maximum number of characters to write (typically the length of str)
stream: file stream to read the data from

# Return value

str on success, null pointer on failure.

# Notes

POSIX additionally requires that fgets sets errno if a read error occurs.

Although the standard specification is unclear in the cases where count <= 1, common implementations do

# Example

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    FILE* tmpf = tmpfile();
    fputs("Alan Turing\n", tmpf);
    fputs("John von Neumann\n", tmpf);
    fputs("Alonzo Church\n", tmpf);
 
    rewind(tmpf);
 
    char buf[8];
    while (fgets(buf, sizeof buf, tmpf) != NULL)
          printf("\"%s\"\n", buf);
 
    if (feof(tmpf))
       puts("End of file reached");
}