File reading synchronously in Linux C

Question

Please see below code.

#include < stdio.h >    
#include < fcntl.h >    
#include < stdlib.h >    
#include < string.h >    

int main(int argc,char **argv,char **envp)
{
   int fd;
   size_t sz;
   char filebuffer[1024];
   int loop;
   fd=open("sample",O_RDONLY);
   if(fd==-1)
   {
      perror("");
      exit(1);
   }
   loop=0;
   while(++loop<300)
   {
      lseek(fd,0,SEEK_SET);
      memset(filebuffer,0,1024);
      sz=read(fd,filebuffer,1024);
      printf("%d.sz=%zd\t%s\n",loop,sz,filebuffer);
      sleep(1);
   }
   close(fd);
   return 0;
}

In this code, I am able to read file. But when I am changing file (reading file "sample") at the same time during reading. Then I am not able to read the changed file. I tried O_SYNC flag too. but still, it is not working, but O_DIRECT is undefined error is coming up. How can I ensure that I am able to read changes? Second thing, but I observed, if I close and open the file reading, then I am able to read changed file.

Question:
How can I read changed file without closing and opening?

you say, "when I am changing file" *Where* exactly are you doing this "changing" ? Another process? Another thread? Another *machine* on a network volume? — WhozCraig, Oct 17 '13 at 03:55
I have opend terminal in ubuntu and i am changing there, in same machine. — Embedded Programmer, Oct 17 '13 at 04:12
Don't include the spaces inside the angle brackets; it is very aconventional and I'm not convinced the compiler is obliged to handle such usage correctly. (The spaces are allowed in an _h-char-sequence_ (see §6.4.2 Header names and §6.10.2 Source file inclusion), but the names for the standard headers are always written without spaces - regardless of what you do with your own headers. (GCC 4.8.1 on Mac OS X rejects the headers with spaces.) — Jonathan Leffler, Oct 17 '13 at 04:27
If "... not able to read the changed file", how is it known that the did in fact change? Thus the issue may be with the write side too. — chux - Reinstate Monica, Oct 17 '13 at 04:32

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 17 '13 at 05:56

I think that you're asking the following question:

I have a program which opens a file called sample and repeatedly reads the first block of that file. That works fine. However, if I edit the file sample, for example with a text editor, then my program does not see the changes, although it will if it closes and reopens the file. How can I see the changes without closing and reopening the file?

If that's your question, then the answer is:

Sorry, you cannot, because the text editor does not modify the file. It creates a new file with the old name.

In Unix, once you open a file, it will not actually get deleted, even if its name is unlinked. If another program "deletes" the file and then creates a new file with the same name, the file you have open is no longer accessible to any other program, but it is still the same file and it will not get deleted until you close it.

Most Unix text utilities, even the ones which claim to work "in-place" (such as sed -i) really do not modify files. That includes text editors. So your program doesn't see changes in the file because the file is not changing; the name has been given to a new file.

So the only way to deal with this is to close and reopen the file. When you reopen, you will be opening the new file with the old name.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

0

The reason for not getting updated data in file could be sync time in filesystem.

I suggest fflush() after writing in to file. This makes your cache data to be written in file.

Related discussions.

Small file not committed to disk for over a minute

Is fwrite non-blocking?

edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

Community

1
1

answered Oct 17 '13 at 04:06

Jeyaram

9,158
7
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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 17 '13 at 04:46

This is an adaptation of your code. It forks to create two processes. The child contains your code, substantially unchanged (different error message, file name variable, and more care with printing the filebuffer which is not null terminated). The parent writes characters (the same character, over and over) to the file.

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

static char const filename[] = "sample";

int main(void)
{
    int fd;
    size_t sz;
    char filebuffer[1024];
    int loop;

    switch (fork())
    {
    case -1:
        fprintf(stderr, "Failed to fork\n");
        break;

    case 0:
        sleep(1);
        fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY);
        if (fd == -1)
        {
            fprintf(stderr, "Failed to open file %s for reading\n", filename);
            exit(1);
        }
        loop = 0;
        while (++loop < 300)
        {
            lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_SET);
            memset(filebuffer, 0, 1024);
            sz = read(fd, filebuffer, 1024);
            printf("%d.sz=%zd\t%.*s\n", loop, sz, (int)sz, filebuffer);
            sleep(1);
        }
        close(fd);
        break;

    default:
        fd = open(filename, O_WRONLY|O_CREAT, 0644);
        if (fd == -1)
        {
            fprintf(stderr, "Failed to create file %s for writing\n", filename);
            exit(1);
        }
        for (loop = 0; loop < 256; loop++)
        {
            memset(filebuffer, (loop % 64) + 33, sizeof(filebuffer));
            lseek(fd, 0L, SEEK_SET);
            write(fd, filebuffer, sizeof(filebuffer));
            sleep(1);
        }
        close(fd);
        break;
    }

    return 0;
}

Example output:

1.sz=1024   """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
2.sz=1024   ################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################
3.sz=1024   ################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################
4.sz=1024   %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
5.sz=1024   &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
6.sz=1024   ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
7.sz=1024   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
8.sz=1024   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
9.sz=1024   ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

As you can see, the processes run asynchronously, so the data in the file does not always change between reads, but the process is seeing the changes.

Try running this on your computer. It should work. (Sample output from Mac OS X 10.8.5.) If it doesn't, you'll need to identify which file system type you have, but I don't think it'll be a problem.

File reading synchronously in Linux C

3 Answers3