Best to avoid only fgets () in binary mode?

fgets()

reads a line of text ending with a single newline character '\n'

(or a partial line if the next line of input is larger than the buffer being used).

When used in a text stream, the actual end-of-line marker, however, is converted to a single character '\n'

, so fgets()

will work as expected.

fgets()

much less useful for a binary stream. It will still read characters to the end of the buffer, or to the first byte '\n'

, whichever comes first. If that's what you want to do, there is no particular reason not to use it fgets()

.

The contents of the binary have whatever meaning you give them. If a given binary uses '\n'

as a delimiter - whether it will be an end-of-line marker for text files or not, then it fgets()

will probably work.

But if you have a binary file with entries (?) Marked with symbols '\n'

, I need to wonder why it was not a text file.

fgets()

is designed to read lines from a text stream, but the way it works is strictly defined by the C standard. It is defined to work by repeating a call fgetc()

.

If it's useful for something else, feel free to use it. But any small change to your requirements, such as using a character other than '\n'

as a delimiter, most likely means it fgets()

will no longer work.

Just for clarity, you are probably better off writing a custom function that does what you want with binary input.