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Comments on Why does fopen return NULL?

Post

Why does fopen return NULL?

+3
−2
#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
int main (void){
  
   FILE *cfPtr; 
   char name[15];
   int ID;
   if ((cfPtr = fopen("draft.txt","w")) == NULL){
    printf("File could not be opened...\n"); //program gives me this as an output
   }

} 

Output:

File could not be opened...

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1 comment thread

From one of the documentation pages for fopen... (1 comment)
From one of the documentation pages for fopen...
elgonzo‭ wrote almost 3 years ago · edited almost 3 years ago

From one of the documentation pages for fopen (https://linux.die.net/man/3/fopen):

Upon successful completion fopen(), fdopen() and freopen() return a FILE pointer. Otherwise, NULL is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

The fopen() function may also fail and set errno for any of the errors specified for the routine open(2).

I mean, if you are really and truly interested in knowing why your fopen invocation fails and only returns NULL instead of a file handle, you should just do what the documentation suggests and check errno which might just tell you why your fopen invocation failed...