READFILE$

The _READFILE$ function returns the complete contents of a file in a single string, but without the usual overhead. It does OPEN, GET and CLOSE the file in one run.

Syntax

contents$ = _READFILE$(fileSpec$)

Parameters

• contents$ is the entire file contents returned as STRING. May return an empty string, if the specified file was empty, or if the program was continued from a file related ERROR.
• fileSpec$ is the name of the file to read as literal or variable STRING, if required inclusive a full or relative path.
  • To avoid errors you should use _FILEEXISTS before calling this function to make sure the file exists.

Description

• Sometimes it's required or at least useful to have the whole contents of a file in a single string for further processing, e.g. to pass it to hashing or compression functions which expect strings.
• In earlier versions of QB64(PE) you had to implement that loading process manually all the time or create a reusable custom FUNCTION for it.
• Now _READFILE$ will simplify this, it's mainly a convenience function to wrap the following code sequence into one handy function:

fh = FREEFILE OPEN fileSpec$ FOR BINARY AS #fh contents$ = SPACE$(LOF(fh)) GET #fh, , contents$ CLOSE #fh

Availability

• 

  none

• 

  v3.12.0

• 
• 

  yes

• 

  yes

• 

  yes

Examples

Example 1

Showing that this function's result is equal to the code sequence shown above.

$COLOR:0 fileSpec$ = "source\global\settings.bas" fh = FREEFILE OPEN fileSpec$ FOR BINARY AS #fh content$ = SPACE$(LOF(fh)) GET #fh, , content$ CLOSE #fh COLOR LightGreen PRINT "Using old manual load method..." COLOR White PRINT content$ COLOR LightGreen PRINT "Using new direct load method..." COLOR White PRINT _READFILE$(fileSpec$) END

Example by RhoSigma

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Example 2

Passing a whole file's contents to hashing functions.

$COLOR:0 fileSpec$ = "source\global\settings.bas" COLOR LightGreen PRINT "CRC32 of the file..." COLOR White PRINT RIGHT$("00000000" + HEX$(_CRC32(_READFILE$(fileSpec$))), 8) PRINT COLOR LightGreen PRINT "MD5 of the file..." COLOR White PRINT _MD5$(_READFILE$(fileSpec$)) END

Example by RhoSigma

See also

• Featured in our "Keyword of the Day" series
• _WRITEFILE, BLOAD, BSAVE
• _DEFLATE$, _INFLATE$
• _ADLER32, _CRC32, _MD5$

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