C Program to Read the First Line From a File

To understand this example, you should have the knowledge of the following C programming topics:

• C File Handling
• C Programming Strings

Program to read the first line from a file

              

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h> // For exit() function
int main() {
    char c[1000];
    FILE *fptr;
    if ((fptr = fopen("program.txt", "r")) == NULL) {
        printf("Error! File cannot be opened.");
        // Program exits if the file pointer returns NULL.
        exit(1);
    }

    // reads text until newline is encountered
    fscanf(fptr, "%[^\n]", c);
    printf("Data from the file:\n%s", c);
    fclose(fptr);

    return 0;
}


            

If the file is found, the program saves the content of the file to a string c until '\n' newline is encountered.

Suppose the program.txt file contains the following text in the current directory.

              

C programming is awesome.
I love C programming.
How are you doing?


            

The output of the program will be:

              

Data from the file:
C programming is awesome.


            

If the file program.txt is not found, the program prints the error message.