Reading information from a file in C language - c

Question

So I have the txt file from which I need to read the number of students written in that file, and because every student is in separate line, it means that I need to read the number of lines in that document. So I need to:
Print all lines from that document
Write the number of lines from that document.
So, I write this:
#include "stdafx.h"
#include <stdio.h>
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* Argo[]){
FILE *student;
char brst[255];
student = fopen("student.txt", "r");
while(what kind of condition to put here?)
{
fgetc(brst, 255, (FILE*)student);
printf("%s\n", brst);
}
return 0;
}
Ok, I understand that I can use the same loop for printing and calculating the number of lines, but I can't find any working rule to end the loop. Every rule I tried caused an endless loop. I tried brst != EOF, brst != \0. So, it works fine and print all elements of the document fine, and then it start printing the last line of document without end. So any suggestions? I need to do this homework in C language, and I am using VS 2012 C++ compiler.

Answer 1

OP's code is close but needs to use fgets() rather than fgetc() and use the return value of fgets() to detect when to quit, it will be NULL #Weather Vane. Also add a line counter.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
FILE *student = fopen("student.txt", "r");
unsigned line_count = 0;
if (student) {
char brst[255];
// fgetc(brst, 255, (FILE*)student);
while (fgets(brst, sizeof brst, student)) {
line_count++;
printf("%u %s", line_count, brst);
}
fclose(student);
}
printf("Line Count %u\n", line_count);
return 0;
}

Answer 2

Try this:
#include "stdafx.h"
#include <stdio.h>
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* Argo[]){
FILE *student;
char brst[255];
char* result = NULL;
//Ensure file open works, if it doesn't quit
if ((student = fopen("student.txt", "r")) == NULL)
{
printf("Failed to load file\n");
return 1;
}
//Read in the file
for ( (result = fgets( brst, sizeof(brst), student));
!feof(student);
(result = fgets( brst, sizeof(brst), student)) )
{
if ( result == NULL ) break; //I've worked on embedded systems where this actually ment waiting on data, not EOF, so a 'continue' would go here instead of break in that case
printf("%s\n", brst);
}
fclose( student );
return 0;
}
feof() is only true after you've read past the end of the file. Using a for with two identical reads, and feof() on the conditional is a simple way to ensure you read the file as expected.

Answer 3

Use feof() to check for an eof condition.
You are correctly reading the file line-by-line, but use fgets(), not fgetc() - and the cast is not needed.
Then use sscanf() to assign the line data to variables (or some "safe" form of it).