FTELL(3P)

PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
ftell, ftello — return a file offset in a stream

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>

long ftell(FILE *stream);
off_t ftello(FILE *stream);

DESCRIPTION
The functionality described on this reference page is aligned with the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This volume of POSIX.1-2017 defers to the ISO C standard.

The ftell() function shall obtain the current value of the file-position indicator for the stream pointed to by stream.

The ftell() function shall not change the setting of errno if successful.

The ftello() function shall be equivalent to ftell(), except that the return value is of type off_t and the ftello() function may change the setting of errno if successful.

RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion, ftell() and ftello() shall return the current value of the file-position indicator for the stream measured in bytes from the beginning of the file.

Otherwise, ftell() and ftello() shall return -1, and set errno to indicate the error.

ERRORS
The ftell() and ftello() functions shall fail if:

EBADF
    The file descriptor underlying stream is not an open file descriptor.

EOVERFLOW
    For ftell(), the current file offset cannot be represented correctly in an object of type long.

EOVERFLOW
    For ftello(), the current file offset cannot be represented correctly in an object of type off_t.

ESPIPE
    The file descriptor underlying stream is associated with a pipe, FIFO, or socket.

The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES
None.

APPLICATION USAGE
None.

RATIONALE
None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.

SEE ALSO
Section 2.5, Standard I/O Streams, fgetpos(), fopen(), fseek(), lseek()

The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017, <stdio.h>

COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .