ICS 2105 Lecture 7

By
James Murithi

Types

of files
File I/O related calls
File statistic related calls
File permission related calls

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non negative number identifies

file to the kernel
File descriptor table stores fds
for various files opened by a
process
A process must identify a file via a
for any kernel service i.e.
read/write
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Reading/writing

to a file you must

identify file to kernel by its FD

 Anything

that can be written/read from

should be kernel identifiable
Processes have three standard file
descriptors
0 standard input stream of a process
1 standard output stream of a process
2 standard error stream of a process

File

descriptors may refer to any

UNIX file type
Everything that can be
written/read from is treated like a
file

 Regular

file contains data

Directory contains listing of files,
written to by kernel
Block file block devices
Character file special devices
Socket network communication file
Named pipe (fifo) interprocess
communication file
Symbolic link points to another file
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Process

will receive a FD from the

kernel when:
1. It opens a file
2. It creates a file
3. Creates/opens any file type e.g.

establishing a network connection,

creating a pipe

Open()

Create()

Socket()

Pipe()

etc

Read()

Write()

Chown()

Chmod()

dirfd

get fd for directory stream

fileno get fd for a file
Fyi - do man on these system calls

include<fcntl.h>

defines arguments
passed to the open and fcntl
functions
Receives at least two parameters:
int open(
const char *pathname,
int oflag,
... /* mode_t mode */
);

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If

successful returns the file

descriptor
Returns -1 if unsuccessful

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1.
2.

const char *pathname - path to

file
int oflag open flag, indicates one
of three open modes

O_RDONLY open for reading

O_WRONLY open for writing
O_RDWR open for read and write

The

function requires at least two

arguments
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O_APPEND

append
O_CREAT creates file (if !exist)
O_TRUNC truncates
O_EXCL generates error if
O_CREAT is specified and the file
exists
O_NONBLOCK open in nonblocking
mode
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int

fileDescriptor;
char* path =
/home/jamesmm/docs/list.txt;
fileDescriptor = open(path,
O_RDONLY);

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Receives

file descriptor of file to

close
int close(fd);
Returns 0 if ok -1 if error
Releases locks on the file

include

<unistd.h> defines symbolic

constants and types
ssize_t read(int filedes, void *buf,
size_t nbytes);

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If

read was successful - returns

number of bytes read
If at end of file (eof) returns
zero
If an error was encountered
returns one

Receives
1.
2.
3.

three parameters
A file descriptor
A character buffer to store
bytes read
Number of bytes to read from file

Declare

necessary variables

char buffer[256];
ssize_t bytesRead;
size_t numBytes; numBytes =

sizeof(buffer);

bytes_read

numBytes);

= read(fd, buffer,

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#include<unistd.h>
ssize_t

write(int fd, const void

*buff, size_t bytes);
If successful - returns bytes
written
Returns -1 if unsuccessful

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int

fd file descriptor
const void *buff message to write
size_t bytes bytes to write

char

msg[] = Some text";

ssize_t bytesWritten;
bytesWritten =
write(fd,buff,sizeof(msg));

System

programs may need to get

file attributes

File owner
Permissions
Date created
Date last modified etc

Stat

functions -get file attributes

The ls command implemented using
stat functions
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Can

be done via three related

system calls
stat
fstat
lstat
All require include of
<sys/types.h>
<sys/stat.h>

All

three functions return

0 if successful
-1if unsuccessful

All

three functions receive a

pointer to a structure
The structure is filled with file
attributes

Requires

a path to the file

int stat(const char *path, struct
stat *buf);

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When

file is a symbolic link it will

return information about the link
int lstat(const char *pathname,
struct stat *buf);

Requires

file to be open receives a

file descriptor
int fstat(int filedes, struct stat
*buf);

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