Counting lines, words, and characters - c

Question

I am a new to programming. I am trying to write a program that reads lines, words and characters from a text file. Here is the code below.
#include "stdio.h"
#include "stdlib.h"
#define IN 1
#define OUT 0
int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
FILE *input;
int character, newword, newline, state;
char c;
state = OUT;
character = newline = newword =0;
input = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if ( input == NULL){
printf("Error! Can not read the input\n");
exit(-1);
}
while ((c = fgetc(input)) != EOF){
character++;
if (c <'a' && c >'z'){;}
if ( c <'A' && c >'Z'){;}
if (c == '\n'){
newline++;
}
if (c == ' ' || c == '\n' || c == '\t'){
state = OUT;
}
else if (state == OUT){
state = IN;
newword++;
}
}
printf("The number of lines: %d\n", newline);
printf("The number of words: %d\n", newword);
printf("The number of characters: %d\n", character);
fclose(input);
}
I have been trying to figure how not to read special characters such as !, #, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), _, +.
I tried using if statements so it won't read the special characters but it reads it. I think one the if statement for the capital letters is wrong because it probably will not read lower case letters.
In the file the following text is in it,
!!.
and it outputs in terminal:
The number of lines: 2
The number of words: 5
The number of characters: 7
However, if I take out the two for loops (c < 'A' && c > 'Z') and (c < 'a' && c > 'z'), then the output becomes
The number of lines: 2
The number of words: 1
The number of characters: 7
Any hints to fix this problem (I do not want the Answer!)?

Answer 1

Your if must be something like:
if ('a' <= c && c <='z'){character++;}
else if ( 'A' <= c && c <='Z'){character++;}

Answer 2

The easiest way to solve your problem is to increase your character counter when the character is between the interval 'a' and 'z' or the interval 'A' and 'Z', and then, since the escape sequence '\n' creates a new line, this also means that you are dealing with a new word, thus you should increment this counter too. And finally you can check for the space or the horizontal tab to increment the new word counter.
if ((c <'a' && c >'z') || ( c <'A' && c >'Z')){
++character;
}
else if (c == '\n'){
++newline;
++newword;
}
else if (c == ' ' || c == '\t'){
++newword;
}