How to open a file for reading in C?

Question

There is this thing that gives me headaches in C programming when I deal with reading from files.

I do not understand the difference between these 2 methods:

FILE *fd;
fd=fopen(name,"r");  // "r" for reading from file, "w" for writing to file
                      //"a" to edit the file

fd returns NULL if the file can't be open, right?

The second method that i use is:

int fd;
fd=open(name,O_RDONLY); 

fd would be -1 if an error occurs at opening the file.

Would anyone be kind enough to explain this to me? Thanks in advance:)

Answer 1

Using fopen() allows you to use the C stdio library, which can be a lot more convenient than working directly with file descriptors. For example, there's no built-in equivalent to fprintf(...) with file descriptors.

Unless you're in need of doing low level I/O, the stdio functions serve the vast majority of applications very well. It's more convenient, and, in the normal cases, just as fast when used correctly.