In C, fopen() uses string literals such as "r" or "r+" or "w" to specify the mode with which to open a file. One possible reason for this I read is at the time C was so new that there might not have been a convenient way to create predefined constants.
However, the function fseek() which is part of the same file IO library uses predefined constants SEEK_SETSEEK_CUR and SEEK_END to specify the mode.
What was the motivation for using, at least what I consider a substandard approach for flag parameters for fopen() but not fseek()? If fseek() could use predefined constants as flags, why could fopen() not?
