Opening all the files from a local directory/folder [duplicate] - c

Question

This question already has answers here:
Using a variable file name in C to read from multiple files with similar names?
(2 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Using Visual Studio 2015 how would i open and read all the file in a directory.
The Input Parameters for the program are
Number of Sensors (N): Determines the number of input files
File Location: A local directory/folder where the files are located. Each file will be named: sensor_0.txt, sensor_1.txt, ... sensor_(n - 1).txt
I can open and read individual files in the directory by hard coding them using fopen, but since the number of input files is not constant I don't know how I would read all of the files in the directory regardless of how many input files there are.
I was thinking that i would need to create the file names since the only thing changing in the file names is the sensor number but that doesn't seem to work since fopen requires a const char * file name.
I have searched for solutions and i found a DIR variable type in dirent.h header file, but that doesn't work with the the Visual Studio Compiler and a package needs to be installed in order to use that header file.
I am in an intro to programming class so i feel like installing outside programs would be the wrong approach to solving this issue, but I could be wrong. I have also looked into functions like FindFirstFile, and FindNextFile but those also seem too advanced for me.
Any help would be really would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

If you're writing a Windows-specific application (rather than something that needs to be portable to other operating systems) then look into the FindFirstFile, FindNextFile, and FindClose APIs.
Here's a sample of how to use these APIs (based somewhat on the samples from the above links):
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
WIN32_FIND_DATA FindFileData;
HANDLE hFind;
if (argc != 2) {
printf("Usage: %s [target_file]\n", argv[0]);
return 1;
}
printf("Target file is %s\n", argv[1]);
hFind = FindFirstFile(argv[1], &FindFileData);
if (hFind == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
printf("FindFirstFile failed, error %d\n", GetLastError());
return 1;
}
do {
printf("File name = %s\n", FileFindData.cFileName);
} while (FindNextFile(hFind, &FindFileData));
FindClose(hFind);
return 0;
}
Disclaimer: I haven't had a Windows dev environment years, so I have no way to compile & verify this sample. It should get you pointed in the right direction, though.

Answer 2

You can just do it by hardcoding the base name and iterating with an index to generate the specific name, something like this
for (size_t i = 0 ; ; ++i)
{
char filepath[MAX_PATH];
FILE *file;
// In principle, you should check the return value to ensure
// it didn't truncate the name
snprintf(filepath, sizeof(filepath), "sensor_%d.txt", i);
// Try to open the file, if it fails it's probably because
// the file did not exist, but it's not the only possible
// reason.
file = fopen(filepath, "r"); // Or "rb", depends ...
if ((done = (file == NULL)) != 0)
break; // Cannot open this, probably there are no more files.
// Process the file here
}
A better way would be to pass the name to another function, so you can later change the name generation method by looking at the directory instead of assuming it.
NOTE 1: Secure c Runtime, in MSVC compiler will probably complain about fopen() and snprintf() since snprintf() uses the POSIX name style or something like that (perhaps using the safe version snprintf_s()) I don't remember. But this is standard c (as per C11) so it should compile with any c compiler.
NOTE 2: You should also, use the full path unless the files are in the CWD. Something like (assuming the files are in drive "C:")
snprintf(filepath, sizeof(filepath), "C:\\full\\path\\sensor_%d.txt", i);