How to use fread and fwrite functions to read and write Binary files?

Question

Hi in my project I've to read a .bin file which has sensor data in the form of short(16 bit values). I'm doing this using fread function into a buffer, but I feel that the reading-in is not happening correctly. I mean there is no consistence between what I write and what I read in. Can you guys suggest what is going wrong here? This is not my code from my project... I'm only trying to verify the fread and fwrite functions here.

#include<stdio.h>
void main()
{
    FILE *fp = NULL;

    short x[10] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,5000,6,-10,11};
    short result[10];

    fp=fopen("c:\\temp.bin", "wb");

    if(fp != NULL)
    {
        fwrite(x, 2 /*sizeof(short)*/, 10 /*20/2*/, fp);
        rewind(fp);
        fread(result, 2 /*sizeof(short)*/, 10 /*20/2*/, fp);
    }
    else
        exit(0);

    printf("\nResult");
    printf("\n%d",result[0]);
    printf("\n%d",result[1]);
    printf("\n%d",result[2]);
    printf("\n%d",result[3]);
    printf("\n%d",result[4]);
    printf("\n%d",result[5]);
    printf("\n%d",result[6]);
    printf("\n%d",result[7]);
    printf("\n%d",result[8]);
    printf("\n%d",result[9]);

    fclose(fp)
 }

After I do the fread() (HEX values):

temp.bin:
01 02 03 04 05 06 e1 8e 88 06 ef bf b6 0b...

After I do the fwrite()

stdout:
Result
0
914
-28
-28714
-32557
1
512
-32557
908
914

Answer 1

Open the file with mode w+ (reading and writing). The following code works:

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
    FILE *fp = NULL;

    short x[10] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,5000,6,-10,11};
    short result[10];
    int i;

    fp=fopen("temp.bin", "w+");

    if(fp != NULL)
    {
        fwrite(x, sizeof(short), 10 /*20/2*/, fp);
        rewind(fp);
        fread(result, sizeof(short), 10 /*20/2*/, fp);
    }
    else
        return 1;

    printf("Result\n");
    for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
        printf("%d = %d\n", i, (int)result[i]);

    fclose(fp);
    return 0;
}

With output:

Result
0 = 1
1 = 2
2 = 3
3 = 4
4 = 5
5 = 6
6 = 5000
7 = 6
8 = -10
9 = 11

Answer 2

When you opened the file, you forgot to allow for reading:

fp=fopen("c:\\temp.bin", "wb");

Should be:

fp=fopen("c:\\temp.bin", "w+b");