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cioc99fgetsc89

How is \0 incorporated into normal text files in reference to fgets

I was just wondering that when you input text just using a normal application such as textedit (on OSX) would it still harbour the same '\0' character on the end of each string so that when read through fgets() if would pick said character up and stop reading?

Because I've created a normal text file, but fgets() keeps on stopping at the end of the designated length, instead of when it finds that character, so I have suspicious if it actually exists when I write to a normal text file.

For Example:

How Are You
There

fgets(str, 15, stdin); This would end up producing: TherAre You

Solution

  • No, text files don't generally contain any control characters. The termination is a C "feature", i.e. a property of how the C language and environment works with strings. Text files are independent of C. The termination is added (to the in-memory buffer into which the data has been read) by the fgets() function.