How can I get a file's size in C?

Question

How can I find out the size of a file I opened with an application written in C?

I would like to know the size because I want to put the content of the loaded file into a string, which I allocate using malloc().

Just writing malloc(10000*sizeof(char)); is IMHO a bad idea.

Answer 1

You need to seek to the end of the file and then ask for the position:

fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_END);
sz = ftell(fp);

You can then seek back, e.g.:

fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_SET);

or (if seeking to go to the beginning)

rewind(fp);

Answer 2

Using standard library:

Assuming that your implementation meaningfully supports SEEK_END:

fseek(f, 0, SEEK_END); // seek to end of file
size = ftell(f); // get current file pointer
fseek(f, 0, SEEK_SET); // seek back to beginning of file
// proceed with allocating memory and reading the file

Linux/POSIX:

You can use stat (if you know the filename), or fstat (if you have the file descriptor).

Here is an example for stat:

#include <sys/stat.h>
struct stat st;
stat(filename, &st);
size = st.st_size;

Win32:

You can use GetFileSize or GetFileSizeEx.

Answer 3

If you have the file descriptor fstat() returns a stat structure which contain the file size.

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>

// fd = fileno(f); //if you have a stream (e.g. from fopen), not a file descriptor.
struct stat buf;
fstat(fd, &buf);
off_t size = buf.st_size;

Answer 4

I ended up just making a short and sweet fsize function(note, no error checking)

int fsize(FILE *fp){
    int prev=ftell(fp);
    fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_END);
    int sz=ftell(fp);
    fseek(fp,prev,SEEK_SET); //go back to where we were
    return sz;
}

It's kind of silly that the standard C library doesn't have such a function, but I can see why it'd be difficult as not every "file" has a size(for instance /dev/null)

Answer 5

How to use lseek/fseek/stat/fstat to get filesize ?

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>

void
fseek_filesize(const char *filename)
{
    FILE *fp = NULL;
    long off;

    fp = fopen(filename, "r");
    if (fp == NULL)
    {
        printf("failed to fopen %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if (fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_END) == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to fseek %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    off = ftell(fp);
    if (off == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to ftell %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf("[*] fseek_filesize - file: %s, size: %ld\n", filename, off);

    if (fclose(fp) != 0)
    {
        printf("failed to fclose %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
}

void
fstat_filesize(const char *filename)
{
    int fd;
    struct stat statbuf;

    fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY, S_IRUSR | S_IRGRP);
    if (fd == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to open %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if (fstat(fd, &statbuf) == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to fstat %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf("[*] fstat_filesize - file: %s, size: %lld\n", filename, statbuf.st_size);

    if (close(fd) == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to fclose %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
}

void
stat_filesize(const char *filename)
{
    struct stat statbuf;

    if (stat(filename, &statbuf) == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to stat %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf("[*] stat_filesize - file: %s, size: %lld\n", filename, statbuf.st_size);

}

void
seek_filesize(const char *filename)
{
    int fd;
    off_t off;

    if (filename == NULL)
    {
        printf("invalid filename\n");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY, S_IRUSR | S_IRGRP);
    if (fd == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to open %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    off = lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_END);
    if (off == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to lseek %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf("[*] seek_filesize - file: %s, size: %lld\n", filename, (long long) off);

    if (close(fd) == -1)
    {
        printf("failed to close %s\n", filename);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
}

int
main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
    int i;

    if (argc < 2)
    {
        printf("%s <file1> <file2>...\n", argv[0]);
        exit(0);
    }

    for(i = 1; i < argc; i++)
    {
        seek_filesize(argv[i]);
        stat_filesize(argv[i]);
        fstat_filesize(argv[i]);
        fseek_filesize(argv[i]);
    }

    return 0;
}

Answer 6

Have you considered not computing the file size and just growing the array if necessary? Here's an example (with error checking ommitted):

#define CHUNK 1024

/* Read the contents of a file into a buffer.  Return the size of the file 
 * and set buf to point to a buffer allocated with malloc that contains  
 * the file contents.
 */
int read_file(FILE *fp, char **buf) 
{
  int n, np;
  char *b, *b2;

  n = CHUNK;
  np = n;
  b = malloc(sizeof(char)*n);
  while ((r = fread(b, sizeof(char), CHUNK, fp)) > 0) {
    n += r;
    if (np - n < CHUNK) { 
      np *= 2;                      // buffer is too small, the next read could overflow!
      b2 = malloc(np*sizeof(char));
      memcpy(b2, b, n * sizeof(char));
      free(b);
      b = b2;
    }
  }
  *buf = b;
  return n;
}

This has the advantage of working even for streams in which it is impossible to get the file size (like stdin).

Answer 7

If you're on Linux, seriously consider just using the g_file_get_contents function from glib. It handles all the code for loading a file, allocating memory, and handling errors.

Answer 8

#include <stdio.h>

#define MAXNUMBER 1024

int main()
{
    int i;
    char a[MAXNUMBER];

    FILE *fp = popen("du -b  /bin/bash", "r");

    while((a[i++] = getc(fp))!= 9)
        ;

    a[i] ='\0';

    printf(" a is %s\n", a);

    pclose(fp);
    return 0;
}  

HTH