Win32 API File Management Create a file and write to it

Example

This example creates a new file named "NewFile.txt", then writes "Hello World!" to its body. If the file already exists, CreateFile will fail and no data will be written. See the dwCreationDisposition parameter in the CreateFile documentation if you don't want the function to fail if the file already exists.

#include <Windows.h>
#include <string>

int main()
{
   // Open a handle to the file
   HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(
      L"C:\\NewFile.txt",     // Filename
      GENERIC_WRITE,          // Desired access
      FILE_SHARE_READ,        // Share mode
      NULL,                   // Security attributes
      CREATE_NEW,             // Creates a new file, only if it doesn't already exist
      FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,  // Flags and attributes
      NULL);                  // Template file handle

   if (hFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
   {
      // Failed to open/create file
      return 2;
   }

   // Write data to the file
   std::string strText = "Hello World!"; // For C use LPSTR (char*) or LPWSTR (wchar_t*)
   DWORD bytesWritten;
   WriteFile(
      hFile,            // Handle to the file
      strText.c_str(),  // Buffer to write
      strText.size(),   // Buffer size
      &bytesWritten,    // Bytes written
      nullptr);         // Overlapped

   // Close the handle once we don't need it.
   CloseHandle(hFile);
}

---

API Reference:

• MSDN CreateFile
• MSDN WriteFile