File I/O

CS 3113 Fall 2018

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Be sure to install all code prerequisites

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CG and AHF: Introduction to Operating Systems
Download TLPI book code

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File Descriptors
| A nonnegative integer that may refer to:
regular files, pipes, FIFOs, sockets, terminals or devices.

| Each process has its own assigned set of file descriptors.

| Used by the system to refer to files (not filenames)

| When requested, the lowest-numbered unused file descriptor is

assigned
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 Standard File Descriptors
| When a shell program is run, these
descriptors are copied from the
terminal to the running program.
| I/O redirection may modify this
assignment.
stdin is mapped to stderr is mapped to
| IDEs may map output to stderr to a input.txt error.txt
red color
| POSIX names are available in ./myprog <input.txt >output.txt 2>error.txt
<unistd.h>

New process/program stdout is mapped to

to be run output.txt

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Key I/O System Calls
| opens the file identified by pathname,
returning a file descriptor.
| reads at most count bytes from the open
file referred to by fd and stores them in
buffer.
| writes up to count bytes from buffer to the
open file referred to by fd.
| is called after all I/O has been completed,
in order to release the file descriptor fd
and its associated kernel resources.
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 Example:
fileio/copy.c

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 same four system calls—open(), read(),
write(), and close()—are used to perform
I/O on all types of files.
Universality of
I/O

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Open
opens the file identified by pathname, returning a file descriptor.

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Read
reads at most count bytes from the open file referred to by fd and stores them in
buffer.

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Write
writes up to count bytes from buffer to the open file referred to by fd.

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Close
is called after all I/O has been completed, in order to release the file descriptor fd
and its associated kernel resources.

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 Always check for errors.

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Seeking

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File offset
| Also called read- write offset or pointer

| the kernel records a file offset for each open file.

| The first byte of the file is at offset 0.

| The file offset is set to point to the start of the file when the file is
opened and is automatically adjusted by each subsequent call to
read() or write()
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Example:
fileio/seek_io.c

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lseek + read + write

du tfile # The number of blocks used

./seek_io tfile s10000 wefg # write efg starting at byte point 10000

du tfile # The number of blocks used

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