12.4 Closing Files

Although you can open multiple files, there's a limit to how many you can have open at once. If your program will open many files in succession, you'll want to close each one as you're done with it; otherwise the standard I/O library could run out of the resources it uses to keep track of open files. Closing a file simply involves calling fclose with the file pointer as its argument:

	fclose(fp);
Calling fclose arranges that (if the file was open for output) any last, buffered output is finally written to the file, and that those resources used by the operating system (and the C library) for this file are released. If you forget to close a file, it will be closed automatically when the program exits.


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This page by Steve Summit // Copyright 1995-1997 // mail feedback