In this related question How to use feof and ferror for fgets (minishell in C), the answers aren't really clear for my problem.
What I'm trying to do is: I want to read all of the characters from a plain text file on my disk. It's not a link, devicefile, socket etc. just a regular text file. Once I've read all the characters I want to see if everything succeeded. What I'm seeing now is, in my Debug builds everything goes successfully, but in my Release builds ferror() always indicates there is a an error. While the Debug build returns the 0 in the end. In both cases I can see that the content of the file has been obtained in a debugger.
my_function(File* f) {
int c;
while ((c = fgetc(f)) != EOF) {
char character = (char) c;
// store character in a dynamic growing buffer
}
// append '0' byte to buffer (to terminate the string).
if (ferror(f)) {
// return error
return 1;
}
return 0; // no error.
}
Rationale of having a already opened file as function argument, is to make it relatively easy to read from a file, without the need to bother with a platform dependent encoding. This is inside a private part of my library, the public functions handle the case that f == NULL.
Do I need to call clearerr(file) first, because the error bit is not initialized in a Release builds?
Related
it is always printing an extra character at the end. here is the code:
#include <stdio.h>
int main ()
{
char bit;
FILE *fp_read,*fp_write;
fp_read = fopen("test.txt","r");
if(fp_read==NULL) {
printf("Error!! Unable to open the file!!");
return 1;
}
while(!feof(fp_read)) {
fscanf(fp_read,"%c",&bit);
printf("%c",bit);
}
fclose(fp_read);
return 0;
}
if test.txt contains 010101 it prints 0101011 . if 00110 it prints 001100. if it contains abc it prints abcc . that means it always repeats the last character.
What is the problem ? can anybody explain ?
I am not able to reproduce the error.
Refer to David Bowling's first comment in the original post for a neat explanation.
The cppreference page for feof has a shorter version.
The eof function only reports the stream state as reported by the most recent I/O operation, it does not examine the associated data source. For example, if the most recent I/O was a fgetc, which returned the last byte of a file, feof returns zero. The next fgetc fails and changes the stream state to end-of-file. Only then feof returns non-zero.
In typical usage, input stream processing stops on any error; feof and ferror are then used to distinguish between different error conditions.
This means that the use of feof in the while loop may not be appropriate. The last character from the file may be junk and will be different in different systems.
Try doing this instead.
while(fscanf(fp_read,"%c",&bit) != EOF) {
printf("%c",bit);
}
I'm trying to recreate a program I saw in class.
The teacher made a file with 10 lines, he showed us that the file was indeed created, and then he displayed its contents.
My code doesn't work for some reason, it just prints what looks like a"=" a million times and then exits.
My code:
void main()
{
FILE* f1;
char c;
int i;
f1=fopen("Essay 4.txt","w");
for(i=0;i<10;i++)
fprintf(f1," This essay deserves a 100!\n");
do
{
c=getc(f1);
putchar(c);
}while(c!=EOF);
}
What is the problem? as far as I can see I did exactly what was in the example given.
The flow is as such:
You create a file (reset it to an empty file if it exists). That's what the "w" mode does.
Then you write stuff. Note that the file position is always considered to be at the very end, as writing moves the file position.
Now you try to read from the end. The very first thing you read would be an EOF already. Indeed, when I try your program on my Mac, I just get a single strange character just as one would expect from the fact that you're using a do { } while. I suggest you instead do something like: for (c = getc(f1); c != EOF; c = getc(f1)) { putchar(c) } or similar loop.
But also, your reading should fail anyway because the file mode is "w" (write only) instead of "w+".
So you need to do two things:
Use file mode "w+".
Reset the file position to the beginning of the file after writing to it: fseek(f1, 0, SEEK_SET);.
// Trying to read file
void readFilee(char *namefile){
FILE *f_in = fopen(namefile,"r");
char x;
int i = 0;
if(!f_in){ printf("Error"); exit(0); }
/* read to EOF */
while(1){
x = getc(f_in);
if(x == '\n') continue;
archivo[i] = x;
if(x == EOF) break;
i++;
}
tamArchivo = i;
fclose(f_in);
}
Fact that the error was f_in is null, but I do not understand why? I'm trying to connect a server with multiple clients, the clients are initialized waiting connection.
The command verificion "if" I get "Error"
add
archivo[i] = '\0';
after the while loop terminate. This will add null charachter at the end of your string archivo
also may be the memory space of your archivo array is not sufficient to get the whole content of the file and so it could cause a buffer overflow so it could cause a crash
Verify f_in is not NULL before using it. I bet fopen fails and this causes f_in to be NULL. Later when you call getc, it will crash.
If that is not the case, try debugging your application with cgdb for instance and see which line causes the crash.
Try replacing while (1) with while (!feof(f_in)). This will exit the loop when the file is at the end. You shouldn't check for end of file like you are in your loop. This would require the end of file character to be somewhere in your file. The value of EOF is actually specifically designed so it doesn't appear in your files.
Other things to look at are uncommenting your check that the file was opened successfully. If this check is failing then you shouldn't attempt to use any of the fxxx functions on the file pointer.
you are not checking for array boundaries of "archivo"
that'd be for me the first thing to check
A friend of mine needs to use MATLAB for one of his classes, so he called me up (a Computer Science Major) and asked if I could teach him C. I am familiar with C++, so I am also familiar with the general syntax, but had to read up on the IO library for C.
I was creating some simple IO programs to show my friend, but my third program is causing me trouble. When I run the program on my machine using Eclipse (with the CDT) Eclipse's console produces a glitchy output where instead of prompting me for the data, it gets the input and then prints it all at once with FAILURE.
The program is supposed to get a filename from user, create the file, and write to it until the user enters a blank line.
When I compile/run it on my machine via console (g++ files2.c) I am prompted for the data properly, but FAILURE shows up, and there is no output file.
I think the error lies with how I am using the char arrays, since using scanf to get the filename will create a functional file (probably since it ignores whitespace), but not enter the while loop.
#include <stdio.h>
#define name_length 20
#define line_size 80
int main() {
FILE * write_file; // pointer to file you will write to
char filename[name_length]; // variable to hold the name of file
char string_buffer[line_size]; // buffer to hold your text
printf("Filename: "); // prompt for filename
fgets(filename, name_length, stdin); // get filename from user
if (filename[name_length-1] == '\n') // if last char in stream is newline,
{filename[name_length-1] = '\0';} // remove it
write_file = fopen(filename, "w"); // create/overwrite file user named
if (!write_file) {printf("FAILURE");} // failed to create FILE *
// inform user how to exit
printf("To exit, enter a blank line (no spaces)\n");
// while getting input, print to file
while (fgets(string_buffer, line_size, stdin) != NULL) {
fputs(string_buffer, write_file);
if (string_buffer[0] == '\n') {break;}
}
fclose(write_file);
return 0;
}
How should I go about fixing the program? I have found next to nothing on user-terminated input being written to file.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a couple of files to delete off of my University's UNIX server, and I cannot specify them by name since they were created with convoluted filenames...
EDIT------
Like I said, I was able to use
scanf("%s", filename);
to get a working filename (without the newline char). But regardless of if I use scanf or fgets for my while loop, if I use them in conjunction with scanf for the filename, I am not able to write anything to file, as it does not enter the while loop.
How should I restructure my writing to file and my while loop?
Your check for the newline is wrong; you're looking at the last character in filename but it may be before that if the user enters a filename that's shorter than the maximum. You're then trying to open a file that has a newline in it's name.
These lines seem to be incorrect:
if (filename[name_length-1] == '\n') // if last char in stream is newline,
{filename[name_length-1] = '\0';} // remove it
You verify the name_length - 1 character,, which is 19 in your case without any regard of the introduced filename's length. So if your file name's length is less then 18 you won't replace the '\n' character at the end of your string. Obviously the file name can't contain '\n' character.
You need to get the size of you file name first with strlen() as an example.
if (filename[strlen(filename) - 1] == '\n')
{
filename[strlen(filename) - 1] = '\0';
}
(Don't forget to include the string.h header)
I hope I was able to help with my weak english.
Does feof() checks for eof for the current position of filepointer or checks for the position next to current filepointer?
Thanks for your help !
Every FILE stream has an internal flag that indicates whether the caller has tried to read past the end of the file already. feof returns that flag. The flag does not indicate whether the current file position is as the end of the file, only whether a previous read has tried to read past the end of the file.
As an example, let's walk through what happens, when reading through a file containing two bytes.
f = fopen(filename, "r"); // file is opened
assert(!feof(f)); // eof flag is not set
c1 = getc(f); // read first byte, one byte remaining
assert(!feof(f)); // eof flag is not set
c2 = getc(f); // read second byte, no bytes remaining
assert(!feof(f)); // eof flag is not set
c3 = getc(f); // try to read past end of the file
assert(feof(f)); // now, eof flag is set
This is why the following is the wrong way to use eof when reading through a file:
f = fopen(filename, "r");
while (!feof(f)) {
c = getc(f);
putchar(c);
}
Because of the way feof works, the end-of-file flag is only set once getc
tries to read past the end of the file. getc will then return EOF, which is
not a character, and the loop construction causes putchar to try to write it
out, resulting in an error or garbage output.
Every C standard library input method returns an indication of success or
failure: getc returns the special value EOF if it tried to read past the
end of the file, or if there was an error while reading. The special value is
the same for end-of-file and error, and this is where the proper way to use
feof comes in: you can use it to distinguish between end-of-file and error
situations.
f = fopen(filename, "r");
c = getc(f);
if (c == EOF) {
if (feof(f))
printf("it was end-of-file\n");
else
printf("it was error\n");
}
There is another internal flag for FILE objects for error situations:
ferror. It is often clearer to test for errors instead of "not end of file".
An idiomatic way to read through a file in C is like this:
f = fopen(filename, "r");
while ((c = getc(f)) != EOF) {
putchar(c);
}
if (ferror(f)) {
perror(filename):
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
fclose(f);
(Some error checking has been elided from examples here, for brevity.)
The feof function is fairly rarely useful.
You can get a better understanding of how feof works, by knowing how it's implemented. Here is a simplified version of how the 7th Edition Unix stdio library implements feof. Modern libraries are very similar, adding code offering thread-safety, increased efficiency, and a cleaner implementation.
extern struct _iobuf {
char *_ptr;
int _cnt;
char *_base;
char _flag;
char _file;
} _iob[_NFILE];
#define _IOEOF 020
#define feof(p) (((p)->_flag&_IOEOF)!=0)
#define getc(p) (--(p)->_cnt>=0? *(p)->_ptr++&0377:_filbuf(p))
int
_filbuf(FILE *iop)
{
iop->_ptr = iop->_base;
iop->_cnt = read(fileno(iop), iop->_ptr, BUFSIZ);
if (iop->_cnt == 0) {
iop->_flag |= _IOEOF;
return(EOF);
}
return(*iop->_ptr++ & 0377);
}
The stdio library maintains with each file a structure containing an internal buffer pointed by _base. The current character in the buffer is pointed by _ptr and the number of characters available is contained in _cnt. The getc macro, which is the base for a lot of higher-level functionality, like scanf, tries to return a character from the buffer. If the buffer is empty, it will call _filbuf to fill it. _filbuf in turn will call read. If read returns 0, which means that no more data is available, _filbuf will set the _IOEOF flag, which feof checks each time you call it to return true.
As you can understand from the above, feof will return true the first time you try to read a character past the end of the file (or a library function tries in your behalf). This has subtle implications on the behavior of various functions. Consider a file containing a single character: the digit 1. After you read that character with getc, feof will return false, because the _IOEOF flag is unset; nobody has yet tried to read past the end of the file. Calling getc again will result in a call to read, the setting of the _IOEOF flag, and this will cause feof to return true. However, after reading the number from the same file using fscanf("%d", &n), feof will immediately return true, because fscanf will have tried to read additional digits of the integer.