C program to append content of one text file to another

Last Updated : 12 Jul, 2025

Given the source and destination text files, the task is to append the content from source file to destination file and then display the content of the destination file.
Examples:

Input: 

file1.text
This is line one in file1
Hello World.
file2.text
This is line one in file2
Programming is fun.

Output: 
 
This is line one in file2
Programming is fun.
This is line one in file1
Hello World.

Approach:

Open file1.txt and file2.txt with "a+"(append and read) option, so that the previous content of the file is not deleted. If files don't exist, they will be created.
Explicitly write a newline ("\n") to the destination file to enhance readability.
Write content from source file to destination file.
Display the contents in file2.txt to console (stdout).

// C program to append the contents of
// source file to the destination file
// including header files
#include <stdio.h>

// Function that appends the contents
void appendFiles(char source[],
                 char destination[])
{
    // declaring file pointers
    FILE *fp1, *fp2;

    // opening files
    fp1 = fopen(source, "a+");
    fp2 = fopen(destination, "a+");

    // If file is not found then return.
    if (!fp1 && !fp2) {
        printf("Unable to open/"
               "detect file(s)\n");
        return;
    }

    char buf[100];

    // explicitly writing "\n"
    // to the destination file
    // so to enhance readability.
    fprintf(fp2, "\n");

    // writing the contents of
    // source file to destination file.
    while (!feof(fp1)) {
        fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), fp1);
        fprintf(fp2, "%s", buf);
    }

    rewind(fp2);

    // printing contents of
    // destination file to stdout.
    while (!feof(fp2)) {
        fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), fp2);
        printf("%s", buf);
    }
}

// Driver Code
int main()
{
    char source[] = "file1.txt",
         destination[] = "file2.txt";

    // calling Function with file names.
    appendFiles(source, destination);

    return 0;
}