### Reading and writing blocks

The library provides functions for reading and writing blocks to a file as binary data or formatted text.

Function: int gsl_block_fwrite (FILE * stream, const gsl_block * b)
  This function writes the elements of the block b to the stream stream in binary format. The return value is 0 for success and `GSL_EFAILED` if there was a problem writing to the file. Since the data is written in the native binary format it may not be portable between different architectures.

Function: int gsl_block_fread (FILE * stream, gsl_block * b)
  This function reads into the block b from the open stream stream in binary format. The block b must be preallocated with the correct length since the function uses the size of b to determine how many bytes to read. The return value is 0 for success and `GSL_EFAILED` if there was a problem reading from the file. The data is assumed to have been written in the native binary format on the same architecture.

Function: int gsl_block_fprintf (FILE * stream, const gsl_block * b, const char * format)
  This function writes the elements of the block b line-by-line to the stream stream using the format specifier format, which should be one of the `%g`, `%e` or `%f` formats for floating point numbers and `%d` for integers. The function returns 0 for success and `GSL_EFAILED` if there was a problem writing to the file.

Function: int gsl_block_fscanf (FILE * stream, gsl_block * b)
  This function reads formatted data from the stream stream into the block b. The block b must be preallocated with the correct length since the function uses the size of b to determine how many numbers to read. The function returns 0 for success and `GSL_EFAILED` if there was a problem reading from the file.