How do I count the number of characters in a file? - c

Question

I have copied the contents of a file to another file and I am trying to get the line, word, and character count. The code I have right now displays the number of lines and words in the file content. Now I need to display the character count but I am unsure of how to do that. I am guessing a for loop? But I am not sure.
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#define MAX_WORD_LEN 100
#define MAX_LINE_LEN 1000
#define ipsumFile "Lorem ipsum.txt"
#define ipsumCopy "Lorem ipsum_COPY.txt"
int wordCount(FILE *fp);
int charCount(FILE *fp);
int sendContentTo(FILE *fp, FILE *out);
int getWordAt(FILE *fp, int pos, char *word);
int appendToFile(char *fileName, char *newText);
int main(void)
{
FILE *fp, *fp2; //"file pointer"
int ch; //place to store each character as read
//open Lorem ipsum.txt for read
if ((fp = fopen(ipsumFile, "r")) == NULL)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Can't open %s file.\n", ipsumFile);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
//open Lorem ipsumCopy for writing
if ((fp2 = fopen(ipsumCopy, "w+")) == NULL)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Can't open %s file.\n", ipsumCopy);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
//print out and count all words in Lorem ipsum.txt
int numOfWords = wordCount(fp);
//print out and count all lines in Lorem ipsum.txt
int numOfLines = sendContentTo(fp, stdout);
//copy the content of Lorem ipsum.txt into a new file (ipsumCopy)
numOfLines = sendContentTo(fp, fp2);
fclose(ipsumFile);
fclose(ipsumCopy);
// close Lorem ipsum.txt
if (fclose(fp) != 0)
fprintf(stderr, "Error closing file\n");
if (fclose(fp2) != 0)
fprintf(stderr, "Error closing copy\n");
return 0;
}
int sendContentTo(FILE *in, FILE *out)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Performing file copy...\n\n");
//start at the beginning of the file
rewind(in);
// array to hold one line of text up to 1000 characters
char line[MAX_LINE_LEN];
int lineCount = 0;
// read one line at a time from our input file
while (fgets(line, MAX_LINE_LEN, in) != NULL)
{
//send line we just read to output.
fprintf(out, "%s", line);
//count the lines
lineCount++;
}
fprintf(stdout, "\nFinished line count.\n");
fprintf(stdout, "Count is: %d.\n\n", lineCount);
// Return how many text lines
// we've processed from input file.
return lineCount;
}
// Read content from file one character at a time.
// Returns number of total characters read from the file.
int charCount(FILE *fp)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Performing char count...\n\n");
rewind(fp);
int charCount = 0;
char ch;
//print out each character, and return the
// number of characters in the file.
fprintf(stdout, "\nFinished character count. \n");
fprintf(stdout, "Count is: %d. \n\n", charCount);
return charCount;
}
// Read content from file one word at a time.
// Returns number of total words read from the file.
int wordCount(FILE *fp)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Performing word count...\n\n");
rewind(fp);
char word[MAX_WORD_LEN];
int wordCount = 0;
while (fscanf(fp, "%s", word) == 1)
{
// Send entire word string
// we just read to console
puts(word);
//count the word
wordCount++;
}
fprintf(stdout, "\nFinished word count.\n");
fprintf(stdout, "Count is: %d.\n\n", wordCount);
return wordCount;
}

Answer 1

You don't need to write different function for counting the number of lines, words, and characters in a file. You can do it in a single parsing of file character by character and while parsing, in order to copy the content of file to another file, you can write the characters to another file. You can do:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int count_and_copy(const char * ipsumFile, const char * ipsumCopy)
{
unsigned int cCount = 0, wCount = 0, lCount = 0;
int incr_word_count = 0, c;
FILE *fp, *fp2;
if ((fp = fopen(ipsumFile, "r")) == NULL)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Can't open %s file.\n", ipsumFile);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if ((fp2 = fopen(ipsumCopy, "w+")) == NULL)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Can't open %s file.\n", ipsumCopy);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
while((c = fgetc(fp)) != EOF)
{
fputc(c, fp2); // write character c to the copy file
cCount++; // character count
if(c == '\n') lCount++; // line count
if (c == ' ' || c == '\n' || c == '\t')
incr_word_count = 0;
else if (incr_word_count == 0) {
incr_word_count = 1;
wCount++; // word count
}
}
fclose (fp);
fclose (fp2);
printf ("Number of lines : %u\n", lCount);
printf ("Number of words : %u\n", wCount);
printf ("Number of characters : %u\n", cCount);
return 0;
}
int main()
{
/* Assuming, you want to count number of lines, words
* and characters of file1 and copy the contents of file1
* to file2.
*/
count_and_copy("file1", "file2");
return 0;
}

Answer 2

I suppose that the following approach will work:
void *cw(const char *fname)
{
FILE *f = fopen(fname, "r");
if (f == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "fopen(%s): %s\n", fname, strerror(errno));
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
int bc = 0; /* bytes counter */
int wc = 0 ; /* words counter */
int nlc = 0; /* new lines counter */
const int in_word_state = 0;
const int out_word_state = 1;
int state = out_word_state;
int c = 0;
for (;;) {
c = fgetc(f);
if (ferror(f) != 0) {
perror("fgetc");
goto error;
}
if (feof(f))
break;
if (c == '\n')
nlc++;
if (c == ' ' || c == '\t' || c == '\n')
state = out_word_state;
if (state == out_word_state) {
state = in_word_state;
wc++;
}
bc++;
}
if (fclose(f) == EOF) {
perror("fclose");
goto error;
}
printf("w: %d, c: %d, l:%d\n", wc, bc, nlc);
error:
if (f != NULL) {
if (fclose(f) == EOF) {
perror("fclose");
}
}
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}