Reads the specified number of bytes from the given file starting at its current read/write position, and returns them as a string.

fileOpen sets the read/write position to the beginning of the file. fileGetSize gets the total size in bytes of given file.

OOP Syntax Help! I don't understand this!

• Method: file:read(...)

Syntax

string|false fileRead ( file theFile, int count )

Required Arguments

• theFile: A handle to the file you wish to read from. Use fileOpen to obtain this handle.
• count: The number of bytes you wish to read.

Returns

• string|false: result

Returns the bytes that were read in a string. Note that this string might not contain as many bytes as you specified if an error occured, i.e. end of file.

Code Examples

client

This example opens the file test.txt and outputs its contents to the console.

function readFile(path)
    local file = fileOpen(path) -- attempt to open the file
    if not file then
        return false -- stop function on failure
    end
    local count = fileGetSize(file) -- get file's total size
    local data = fileRead(file, count) -- read whole file
    fileClose(file) -- close the file once we're done with it
    outputConsole(data) -- output code in console
end

addCommandHandler("readfile",function(cmd,fileName) -- add command to test this function
    readFile(fileName) -- execute the function
end)

See Also

File Functions

• fileClose
• fileCopy
• fileCreate
• fileDelete
• fileExists
• fileFlush
• fileGetContents
• fileGetPath
• fileGetPos
• fileIsEOF
• fileOpen
• fileGetSize
• fileRead
• fileRename
• fileSetPos
• fileWrite

File Elements

• file

Reference

• Scripting Functions