[Tutor] Moving file pointer (original) (raw)

Alan Gauld alan.gauld at blueyonder.co.uk
Thu Jul 29 23:37:01 CEST 2004


I'm trying to set the file pointer for a file on a posix machine. For instance, I have a simple 5-byte file with data 'abcde'. I want to 'extend' the file to 10-bytes, but not initialize any data in those extra 5-bytes. They should be all zeros.

You can seek() the end of the file, then use write() to output 5 zeros. Or easier open the file in append mopde and just write 5 zero bytes.

To actually write ASCII code zero you can use escaping:

zero = '\000' five-zeros = zero * 5

Alternatively you could open in binary mode and use the struct module...

As to initialising data, writing zeros is initialising it!

HTH,

Alan G



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