// // Until now, we've only been printing our output in the console, // which is good enough for fighting aliens and hermit bookkeeping. // // However, many other tasks require some interaction with the file system, // which is the underlying structure for organizing files on your computer. // // The file system provides a hierarchical structure for storing files // by organizing them into directories, which hold files and other directories, // thus creating a tree structure that can be navigated. // // Fortunately, the Zig standard library provides a simple API for interacting // with the file system, see the detail documentation here: // // https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/std/#std.fs // // In this exercise, we'll try to: // - create a new directory, // - open a file in the directory, // - write to the file. // // import std as always const std = @import("std"); pub fn main() !void { // first we get the current working directory const cwd: std.fs.Dir = std.fs.cwd(); // then we'll try to make a new directory /output/ // to store our output files. cwd.makeDir("output") catch |e| switch (e) { // there is a chance you might want to run this // program more than once and the path might already // have been created, so we'll have to handle this error // by doing nothing // // we want to catch error.PathAlreadyExists and do nothing error.PathAlreadyExists => {}, // if there's any other unexpected error we just propagate it through else => return e, }; // then we'll try to open our freshly created directory // wait a minute... // opening a directory might fail! // what should we do here? var output_dir: std.fs.Dir = try cwd.openDir("output", .{}); defer output_dir.close(); // we try to open the file `zigling.txt`, // and propagate any error up const file: std.fs.File = try output_dir.createFile("zigling.txt", .{}); // it is a good habit to close a file after you are done with it // so that other programs can read it and prevent data corruption // but here we are not yet done writing to the file // if only there were a keyword in Zig that // allowed you to "defer" code execution to the end of the scope... defer file.close(); // you are not allowed to move these two lines above the file closing line! const byte_written = try file.write("It's zigling time!"); std.debug.print("Successfully wrote {d} bytes.\n", .{byte_written}); } // to check if you actually write to the file, you can either, // 1. open the file in your text editor, or // 2. print the content of the file in the console with the following command // >> cat ./output/zigling.txt // // // More on Creating files // // notice in: // ... try output_dir.createFile("zigling.txt", .{}); // ^^^ // we passed this anonymous struct to the function call // // this is the struct `CreateFlag` with default fields // { // read: bool = false, // truncate: bool = true, // exclusive: bool = false, // lock: Lock = .none, // lock_nonblocking: bool = false, // mode: Mode = default_mode // } // // Question: // - what should you do if you want to also read the file after opening it? // - go to the documentation of the struct `std.fs.Dir` here: // https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/std/#std.fs.Dir // - can you find a function for opening a file? how about deleting a file? // - what kind of options can you use with those functions?