fseek

Syntax

#include <stdio.h> int fseek(FILE *file, long offset, int mode);

Description

This function moves the file pointer for file according to mode:

SEEK_SET

The file pointer is moved to the offset specified.

SEEK_CUR

The file pointer is moved relative to its current position.

SEEK_END

The file pointer is moved to a position offset bytes from the end of the file. The offset is usually nonpositive in this case.

Warning! The ANSI standard only allows values of zero for offset when mode is not SEEK_SET and the file has been opened as a text file. Although this restriction is not enforced, beware that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between file characters and text characters under MS-DOS, so some fseek operations may not do exactly what you expect.

Also, since lseek under DOS does not return an error indication when you try to move the file pointer before the beginning of the file, neither will fseek. Portable programs should call ftell after fseek to get the actual position of the file pointer.

Note that DOS does not mind if you seek before the beginning of the file, like seeking from the end of the file by more than the file's size. Therefore, lseek will not return with an error in such cases either.

Return Value

Zero if successful, nonzero if not.

Portability

ANSI/ISO C	C89; C99
POSIX	1003.2-1992; 1003.1-2001

Example

fseek(stdin, 12, SEEK_CUR); /* skip 12 bytes */