### 5.11 `fgetpos`—record position in a stream or file ¶

Synopsis

    #include <stdio.h>
    int fgetpos(FILE *restrict fp, fpos_t *restrict pos);
    int _fgetpos_r(struct _reent *ptr, FILE *restrict fp, fpos_t *restrict pos);

Description
Objects of type `FILE` can have a “position” that records how much of the file your program has already read. Many of the `stdio` functions depend on this position, and many change it as a side effect.

You can use `fgetpos` to report on the current position for a file identified by fp; `fgetpos` will write a value representing that position at `*pos`. Later, you can use this value with `fsetpos` to return the file to this position.

In the current implementation, `fgetpos` simply uses a character count to represent the file position; this is the same number that would be returned by `ftell`.

Returns
`fgetpos` returns `0` when successful. If `fgetpos` fails, the result is `1`. Failure occurs on streams that do not support positioning; the global `errno` indicates this condition with the value `ESPIPE`.

Portability
`fgetpos` is required by the ANSI C standard, but the meaning of the value it records is not specified beyond requiring that it be acceptable as an argument to `fsetpos`. In particular, other conforming C implementations may return a different result from `ftell` than what `fgetpos` writes at `*pos`.

No supporting OS subroutines are required.