al_fread(3alleg5)

💖 al_fread — the Allegro 5 API, bestie edition ✨

okay so this one lives in the 3alleg5 manual, and it's literally the "gimme bytes from a file" girlie. let's get into it 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

al_fread — Allegro 5 API. yes that's the whole name, she's simple and she knows it 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <allegro5/allegro.h>

size_t al_fread(ALLEGRO_FILE *f, void *ptr, size_t size)

like. the signature is right there. no notes 👑

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so the vibe is: you hand her a file, a buffer, and a number, and she goes and reads size bytes into the buffer pointed to by ptr, from the given file. that's it. that's the job. main character behaviour honestly 🌈

and she returns the number of bytes she actually read. which — plot twist — is not always what you asked for 😭 because if an error happens, or the end-of-file gets reached, the return value is a short byte count (or zero). so like, you asked for 100 bytes and got 37? that's a thing that can happen. not her fault. well. kind of her fault. anyway.

⚠️ big one, bestie: al_fread() does not distinguish between EOF and other errors. she genuinely cannot tell you which one happened. she's not being mysterious, she just doesn't know 💀

so if you do wanna know what went down, you gotta go ask al_feof(3alleg5) and al_ferror(3alleg5) — those two will tell you which of the two actually occurred. periodt.

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• al_fgetc(3alleg5) — the one-byte-at-a-time girlie
• al_fread16be(3alleg5)
• al_fread16le(3alleg5)
• al_fread32be(3alleg5)
• al_fread32le(3alleg5)

go read those too, they're all giving the same energy with different endianness 💖

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and that's the page, bestie!! this was the Allegro reference manual, and you just read al_fread(3alleg5) — slay, ate, no crumbs, and also please go check for EOF properly. mwah 🎀✨🦋