C binary file versus text file efficiency

Question

i\'m quite new in C and i would like some help. lets say i need to store in a file only 6 digit numbers. (lets assume the size of int equals 4) what would be more efficient

Answer 1

A binary file is basically any file that is not "line-oriented". Any file where besides the actual written characters and newlines there are other symbols as well.

Usually when you write a file in text mode, any new line \n will be translated to a carriage return + line feed \r\n.

There isn't any memory efficiency that can be achieved by using a binary file as apposed to text files, files are stored on disk and not in memory. It all depends on what you want to do with the file and how you wish to format it.

Since you are working with pure integers (regardless of what the int size is) using a text or binary file will have the same impact on performance (meaning that it wont make any difference which type you choose to work with).

If you want to later modify or read the file in a text editor, it is best to use the text mode to write the file.