4.1.2  Writing output to a file

Xcas has a basic file I/O support in form of three commands: fopen, fprint and fclose. Note that reading from files is not supported.

The fopen command creates and opens a file to write into.

• fopen takes filename, a string.
• fopen(filename) creates a file named filename (and erases it if it already exists).

To use this, you need to associate it with a variable var:=fopen(filename) which use to refer to the file when printing to it.

The fprint command writes to a file.

• fprint takes two mandatory arguments and one optional argument:
  • var, a variable name associated with a file through fopen.
  • Optionally, Unquoted, the symbol.
  • info, a list of what you want to write to the file.
• fprint(var ⟨,Unquote ⟩,info) writes info into the file given by var. By default, strings in info are written with their quotation marks, with the option Unquoted, fprint will print them with the quotation marks.

The fclose command closes a previously opened file.

• fclose takes var, a variable assigned to a file with fopen.
• fclose(var) closes the file given by var to further writing.

Example

To write contents to a file, you first need to open the file and associate it with a variable.

This creates a file named “bar” (and so erase it if it already exists). To write to the file:

This puts

in the file. Note that the quotation marks are not inserted if you use the Unquoted argument:

This puts

in the file. Finally, after you have finished writing what you want into the file, you close the file with the fclose command:

This returns 1 on success and 0 on failure.