In this chapter, we expanded our knowledge of streams to text and binary streams. We learned about the various stream properties and briefly explored file functions that manipulate text streams and binary streams. We also learned about some common file functions, including fopen(), fflush(), and flclose(). These functions were demonstrated in three different programs that obtained input and output filenames in various ways. The first way hardcoded filenames into the program. The second way gave the user a prompt for each file and read the filenames with scanf(). The last way received filenames from command-line arguments via argv.
With the knowledge we have gained from covering these topics, we are ready to start with the next chapter, where we'll begin working on these simple programs, enhancing the command-line argument process and performing useful work on the input to generate meaningful output.