GLib.file_get_contents
Description: Reference for GLib.file_get_contents

### Function

# GLibfile_get_contents

since: 2.0

#### Declaration

    gboolean
    g_file_get_contents (
      const gchar* filename,
      gchar** contents,
      gsize* length,
      GError** error
    )

#### Description

Reads an entire file into allocated memory, with good error checking.

If the call was successful, it returns `TRUE` and sets `contents` to the file contents and `length` to the length of the file contents in bytes. The string stored in `contents` will be nul-terminated, so for text files you can pass `NULL` for the `length` argument. If the call was not successful, it returns `FALSE` and sets `error`. The error domain is `G_FILE_ERROR`. Possible error codes are those in the `GFileError` enumeration. In the error case, `contents` is set to `NULL` and `length` is set to zero.

Available since: 2.0

#### Parameters

`filename`

  Type: `const gchar*`

  Name of a file to read contents from, in the GLib file name encoding.

  The data is owned by the caller of the function.
  The value is a file system path, using the OS encoding.

`contents`

  Type: An array of `guint8`

  Location to store an allocated string, use `g_free()` to free the returned string.

  The argument will be set by the function.
  The length of the array is specified in the `length` argument.
  The caller of the function takes ownership of the data, and is responsible for freeing it.

`length`

  Type: `gsize*`

  Location to store length in bytes of the contents, or `NULL`.

  The argument will be set by the function.
  The argument can be set to `NULL` by the function.

`error`

  Type: `GError **`

  The return location for a recoverable error.

  The argument can be `NULL`.
  If the return location is not `NULL`, then you must initialize it to a `NULL` `GError*`.
  The argument will be left initialized to `NULL` by the function if there are no errors.
  In case of error, the argument will be set to a newly allocated `GError`; the caller will take ownership of the data, and be responsible for freeing it.

#### Return value

Type: `gboolean`

`TRUE` on success, `FALSE` if an error occurred.