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# fclose

From cppreference.com
< c‎ | io

Defined in header `<stdio.h>` |  |
int fclose( FILE *stream ); |  |

Closes the given file stream. Any unwritten buffered data are flushed to the OS. Any unread buffered data are discarded.

Whether or not the operation succeeds, the stream is no longer associated with a file, and the buffer allocated by setbuf or setvbuf, if any, is also disassociated and deallocated if automatic allocation was used.

### [edit] Parameters

stream | - | the file stream to close

### [edit] Return value

​0​ on success, EOF otherwise

### [edit] Example

fclose with error checking. Code closes a file which was opened for writing data.

Run this code

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

    int main(void)
    {
        FILE *fp = fopen("data.txt","w");
        if (fp == NULL)
        {
           perror("fopen()");
           fprintf(stderr,"fopen() failed in file %s at line # %d\n", __FILE__,__LINE__-4);
           exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }

        /* Normal processing continues here. */
        int ret_code = fclose(fp);
        if (ret_code == EOF)
        {
          perror("fclose()");
          fprintf(stderr,"fclose() failed in file %s at line # %d\n", __FILE__,__LINE__-4);
          exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }

        return EXIT_SUCCESS;
    }

Output:

    (none)

### [edit] See also

fopen | opens a file (function) [edit]
freopen | open an existing stream with a different name (function) [edit]
C++ documentation for fclose

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