Know the row with max characters (C) - c

I have written a program in C, to find the row with the max number of characters.
Here is the code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
char c; /* used to store the character with getc */
int c_tot = 0, c_rig = 0, c_max = 0; /* counters of characters*/
int r_tot = 0; /* counters of rows */
FILE *fptr;
fptr = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if (fptr == NULL || argc != 2)
{
printf ("Error opening the file %s\n'", argv[1]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
while ( (c = getc(fptr)) != EOF)
{
if (c != ' ' && c != '\n')
{
c_tot++;
c_rig++;
}
if (c == '\n')
{
r_tot++;
if (c_rig > c_max)
c_max = c_rig;
c_rig = 0;
}
}
printf ("Total rows: %d\n", r_tot);
printf ("Total characters: %d\n", c_tot);
printf ("Total characters in a row: %d\n", c_max);
printf ("Average number of characters on a row: %d\n", (c_tot/r_tot));
printf ("The row with max characters is: %s\n", ??????)
return 0;
}
I can easily find the row with the highest number of characters but how can I print that out?

You'll need to store the line with the highest character count, e.g. in an array.
If you can make assumptions about line length, declare two arrays of characters:
char currentLine[255];
char maxLine[255];
Upon reading each character with getc, put it in the line array. After processing the line, if the current line has a higher count, copy the contents of currentLine into maxLine, using memcpy. You're already keeping track of the lengths for those two arrays as c_tot and c_max.
And if you can't make assumptions about line length, you can use the same technique but you'll need to malloc and realloc your buffers as you encounter lines longer than your initial size.

You should store the current row as well in a char * and have a largest string char *. In the test where you determine the max size, you should also copy the current row to the largest string.
Don't forget to initialize the largest string to "" in order to avoid an error at the zero length file situation.

Related

C read file content into an array of strings

I need to load the contents of a file into two string arrays. I tried the following and it is not working.
file.txt contains 10 records and each record has two string values separated by whitespace.
CODE:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void) {
char line[12][20];
FILE *fptr = NULL;
int i = 0;
int tot = 0;
fptr = fopen("file.txt", "r");
char arr[20][20];
while (fgets(line, sizeof(line), fptr)) {
strcpy(arr[i],line);
i++;
}
tot=i;
for (int i=0; i<tot; i++) {
printf("first value %s",arr[i][0]);
printf("second value is %s",arr[i][1]);
printf("\n");
}
return 0;
}
If I understand correctly, you're trying to store data in a structure like:
{{"line1A", "line1B"}, {"line2A", "line2B"}, {"line3A", "line3B"}}
It looks like you need an array where each element consists of two arrays (strings), one for the first value and one for the second value on each line. If this is the case, you need a three dimensional array of chars.
In the example below I've declared arrayOfLines as array with 12 elements each of which has 2 arrays of chars (for your two values per line), with space for 20 chars in each string (NULL terminated char array)
There are some other problems with your code:
The first parameter for fgets() should be a char * - a pointer to a string buffer. Your code passes in a multi-dimensional array of chars.
Your while loop should continue until fgets returns NULL
You need to split each line into multiple strings
Check for buffer overruns when copying strings with strcpy()
In the example code I used strtok() delimited by a " " space character - you may need to play around with this - strtok can accept an array of chars to be used as a delimiter. In the example, I split the first string using the first space char, and the second string is delimited by the end of line.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void)
{
// Array for 12 lines, each with 2 strings, each string max 20 chars
// Adjust values as required.
char arrayOfLines[12][2][20];
FILE *fptr = NULL;
int i = 0;
int tot = 0;
fptr = fopen("file.txt", "r");
// char arr[20][20]; not needed
char line[20];
while(fgets(line, sizeof(line) / sizeof(line[0]), fptr) != NULL)
{
// Rudimentary error checking - if the string has no newline
// there wasn't enough space in line
if (strchr(line, '\n') == NULL) {
printf("Line too long...");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
// Split string into tokens
// NB: Check for buffer overruns when copying strings
char *ptr1 = strtok(line, " ");
strcpy(arrayOfLines[i][0], ptr1);
char *ptr2 = strtok(NULL, "\n");
strcpy(arrayOfLines[i][1], ptr2);
i++;
}
tot=i; // Unecessary - just use a different variable in your loop and use i as the upper bound
for (int i=0;i<tot;i++)
{
printf("first value %s\n", arrayOfLines[i][0]);
printf("second value is %s\n", arrayOfLines[i][1]);
printf("\n");
}
return 0;
}
printf("first value %s",arr[i][0]);
printf("second value is %s",arr[i][1]);
Basicly all you are doing is printing 2 chars from i word when you want to print full string you should do it like this: printf("%s",arr[i]); You said that value is separated by whitespace so when you are getting line from file you will save it to arr[i] (if first line in file contains "Hello World", your arr[0] will contain "Hello World") when you want to split it into 2 printf you need to print them char by char until space.
Edit: I reminded myself about function sscanf you can use it to get data from file array like you whould do it with keyboard input
You can use this to do that
Code
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void){
char line[12][20];
char arr[20][20];
FILE *fptr=NULL;
int i=0;
fptr = fopen("file.txt", "r");
if(!fptr){
printf("cant open file\n");
exit(1);
}
while(fgets(*line, sizeof(line), fptr)){
strncpy(arr[i],*line, sizeof(*line));
i++;
}
for (int j=0;j<i;j++){
printf("%s\n", arr[j]);
}
return 0;
}
Notes and changes I made on your code:
Check fptr as return value of open() if it's NULL decide what to do.
Remove unnecessary tot variable and use another index j in last for loop.
Use strncpy() as a better version of strcpy()
Correct way of print arr, printf("%s\n", arr[j]);
\n can be embed on first printf()

How to fscanf word by word in a file?

I have a file with a series of words separated by a white space. For example file.txt contains this: "this is the file". How can I use fscanf to take word by word and put each word in an array of strings?
Then I did this but I don't know if it's correct:
char *words[100];
int i=0;
while(!feof(file)){
fscanf(file, "%s", words[i]);
i++;
fscanf(file, " ");
}
When reading repeated input, you control the input loop with the input function itself (fscanf in your case). While you can also loop continually (e.g. for (;;) { ... }) and check independently whether the return is EOF, whether a matching failure occurred, or whether the return matches the number of conversion specifiers (success), in your case simply checking that the return matches the single "%s" conversion specifier is fine (e.g. that the return is 1).
Storing each word in an array, you have several options. The most simple is using a 2D array of char with automatic storage. Since the longest non-medical word in the Unabridged Dictionary is 29-characters (requiring a total of 30-characters with the nul-terminating character), a 2D array with a fixed number of rows and fixed number of columns of at least 30 is fine. (dynamically allocating allows you to read and allocate memory for as many words as may be required -- but that is left for later.)
So to set up storage for 128 words, you could do something similar to the following:
#include <stdio.h>
#define MAXW 32 /* if you need a constant, #define one (or more) */
#define MAXA 128
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
char array[MAXA][MAXW] = {{""}}; /* array to store up to 128 words */
size_t n = 0; /* word index */
Now simply open your filename provided as the first argument to the program (or read from stdin by default if no argument is given), and then validate that your file is open for reading, e.g.
/* use filename provided as 1st argument (stdin by default) */
FILE *fp = argc > 1 ? fopen (argv[1], "r") : stdin;
if (!fp) { /* validate file open for reading */
perror ("file open failed");
return 1;
}
Now to the crux of your read-loop. Simply loop checking the return of fscanf to determine success/failure of the read, adding words to your array and incrementing your index on each successful read. You must also include in your loop-control a check of your index against your array bounds to ensure you do not attempt to write more words to your array than it can hold, e.g.
while (n < MAXA && fscanf (fp, "%s", array[n]) == 1)
n++;
That's it, now just close the file and use your words stored in your array as needed. For example just printing the stored words you could do:
if (fp != stdin) fclose (fp); /* close file if not stdin */
for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++)
printf ("array[%3zu] : %s\n", i, array[i]);
return 0;
}
Now just compile it, With Warnings Enabled (e.g. -Wall -Wextra -pedantic for gcc/clang, or /W3 on (VS, cl.exe) and then test on your file. The full code is:
#include <stdio.h>
#define MAXW 32 /* if you need a constant, #define one (or more) */
#define MAXA 128
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
char array[MAXA][MAXW] = {{""}}; /* array to store up to 128 words */
size_t n = 0; /* word index */
/* use filename provided as 1st argument (stdin by default) */
FILE *fp = argc > 1 ? fopen (argv[1], "r") : stdin;
if (!fp) { /* validate file open for reading */
perror ("file open failed");
return 1;
}
while (n < MAXA && fscanf (fp, "%s", array[n]) == 1)
n++;
if (fp != stdin) fclose (fp); /* close file if not stdin */
for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++)
printf ("array[%3zu] : %s\n", i, array[i]);
return 0;
}
Example Input File
$ cat dat/thefile.txt
this is the file
Example Use/Output
$ ./bin/fscanfsimple dat/thefile.txt
array[ 0] : this
array[ 1] : is
array[ 2] : the
array[ 3] : file
Look things over and let me know if you have further questions.
strtok() might be a function that can help you here.
If you know that the words will be separated by whitespace, then calling strtok will return the char pointer to the start of the next word.
Sample code from https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/3p-strtok/
#include <string.h>
...
char *token;
char *line = "LINE TO BE SEPARATED";
char *search = " ";
/* Token will point to "LINE". */
token = strtok(line, search);
/* Token will point to "TO". */
token = strtok(NULL, search);
In your case, the space character would also act as a delimiter in the line.
Note that strtok might modify the string passed in, so if you need to you should make a deep copy using something like malloc.
It might also be easier to use fread() to read a block from a file
As mentioned in comments, using feof() does not work as would be expected. And, as described in this answer unless the content of the file is formatted with very predictable content, using any of the scanf family to parse out the words is overly complicated. I do not recommend using it for that purpose.
There are many other, better ways to read content of a file, word by word. My preference is to read each line into a buffer, then parse the buffer to extract the words. This requires determining those characters that may be in the file, but would not be considered part of a word. Characters such as \n,\t, (space), -, etc. should be considered delimiters, and can be used to extract the words. The following is a recipe for extracting words from a file: (example code for a few of the items is included below these steps.)
Read file to count words, and get the length of the longest word.
Use count, and longest values from 1st step to allocate memory for words.
Rewind the file.
Read file line by line into a line buffer using while(fgets(line, size, fp))
Parse each new line into words using delimiters and store each word into arrays of step 2.
Use resulting array of words as necessary.
free all memory allocated when finished with arrays
Some example of code to do some of these tasks:
// Get count of words, and longest word in file
int longestWord(char *file, int *nWords)
{
FILE *fp=0;
int cnt=0, longest=0, numWords=0;
int c;
fp = fopen(file, "r");
if(fp)
{
// if((strlen(buf) > 0) && (buf[0] != '\t') && (buf[0] != '\n') && (buf[0] != '\0')&& (buf[0] > 0))
while ( (c = fgetc(fp) ) != EOF )
{
if ( isalnum (c) ) cnt++;
else if ( ( ispunct (c) ) || ( isspace(c) ) || (c == '\0' ))
{
(cnt > longest) ? (longest = cnt, cnt=0) : (cnt=0);
numWords++;
}
}
*nWords = numWords;
fclose(fp);
}
else return -1;
return longest;
}
// Create indexable memory for word arrays
char ** Create2DStr(ssize_t numStrings, ssize_t maxStrLen)
{
int i;
char **a = {0};
a = calloc(numStrings, sizeof(char *));
for(i=0;i<numStrings; i++)
{
a[i] = calloc(maxStrLen + 1, 1);
}
return a;
}
Usage: For a file with 25 words, the longest being 80 bytes:
char **strArray = Create2DStr(25, 80+1);//creates 25 array locations
//each 80+1 characters long
//(+1 is room for null terminator.)
int i=0;
char words[50][50];
while(fscanf(file, " %s ", words[i]) != EOF)
i++;
I wouldn't entirely recommend doing it this way, because of the unknown amount of words in the file, and the unknown length of a "word". Either can be over the size of '50'. Just do it dynamically, instead. Still, this should show you how it works.
How can I use fscanf to take word by word and put each word in an array of strings?
Read each word twice: first to find length via "%n". 2nd time, save it. (Inefficient yet simple)
Re-size strings as you go. Again inefficient, yet simple.
// Rough untested sample code - still need to add error checking.
size_t string_count = 0;
char **strings = NULL;
for (;;) {
long pos = ftell(file);
int n = 0;
fscanf(file, "%*s%n", &n); // record where scanning a "word" stopped
if (n == 0) break;
fseek(file, pos, SEEK_SET); // go back;
strings = realloc(strings, sizeof *strings * (string_count+1));// increase array size
strings[string_count] = malloc(n + 1u); // Get enough memory for the word
fscanf(file, "%s ", strings[string_count] ); // read/save word
}
// use strings[], string_count
// When done, free each strings[] and then strings

Detecting single character in string

So, I'm trying to detect a single character in a string. There must be no other characters besides whitespace and a null character. This is my first issue, as my code detects the character in a string with other characters (besides the whitespace).
My second issue, is I can't seem to figure out how best to read matrices from a file. I'm supposed to read the first line and get the ROWS x COLUMNS. Then I'm supposed to read the data into the a matrix array that is stored globally. Then reading the second matrix into a second matrix array (stored globally as well).
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <string.h>
#define MAXLINE 100
typedef struct matrixStruct{
int rows;
int columns;
}matrixStruct;
typedef int bool;
enum{
false,
true
};
/*
*
*/
int aMatrix1[10][10];
int aMatrix2[10][10];
int multiMatrix[10][10];
int main(int argc, char** argv){
FILE *inputFile;
char tempLine[MAXLINE], *tempChar, *tempString;
char *endChar;
endChar = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char));
(*endChar) = '*';
bool readFile = true;
inputFile = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if(inputFile == NULL){
printf("File %s not found.\n", argv[1]);
perror("Error");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}else{
printf("File opened!\n");
}
int numRow, numColumn, i, j, tempNum, count = 0;
do{
fgets(tempLine, MAXLINE, inputFile);
tempChar = strchr(tempLine, '*');
if(tempChar != NULL){
printf("True # %s\ncount=%d\n",tempChar,count);
readFile = false;
}else{
sscanf(tempLine, "%d %d", &numRow, &numColumn);
count++;
for(i=0;i<numRow;i++){
fgets(tempLine, MAXLINE, inputFile);
for(j=0;j<numColumn;j++){
aMatrix1[i][j] = atoi(tempNum);
}
}
}
}
while(readFile);
printf("aMatrix1[%d][%d]= \n", numRow, numColumn);
for(i=0; i < numRow;i++){
for(j=0; j < numColumn; j++){
printf("aMatrix[%d][%d] = %d\t", i, j, aMatrix1[i][j]);
}
printf("\n");
}
return (EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
For the first issue you could do what you suggested in your comment (regexp are an overkill here) - loop through the string, break on any non-whitespace char that's not what you expect, and count the ones that do match - you don't want 0 matches, and i guess also no more than 1.
However, I suggest you read the man page for strtok - I normally wouldn't suggest it as it's not thread-safe and has strange behaviors, but in this simple case it could work fine - provide whitespace chars as delimiters, and it would return the first non-whitespace string. If that's doesn't strcmp with "*", or if the next call to strtok doesn't return null, then it's not a match.
By the way - what do you plan to do with lines that aren't " .. * .. " or " ROWS x COLUMNS "? you're not handling them right now.
As for the second issue - strtok again could come to the rescue - repeated calls would just give you the whitespace-delimited numbers (as strings), and you'll be able to populate tempNum for each iteration.

Reading a text file into 2d array

I have a text file with just random letters in rows and columns. All I would like to do is make a 2d array so that it's puzzle[i][j] where if I put printf("%c", puzzle[5][4]); it would simply give me the 4th row and 3rd columns character (since it starts at 0 in an array). Here is my code so far.
#define MAXROWS 60
#define MAXCOLS 60
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
main()
{
FILE *TableFilePtr;
char TableFileName[100];
char PuzzleFileName[100];
char puzzle[MAXROWS][MAXCOLS];
printf("Please enter the table file name: ");
scanf("%s",TableFileName);
TableFilePtr=fopen(TableFileName, "r");
if(TableFilePtr == NULL)
{
printf("Can't open %s", TableFileName);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
char words;
int n;
n=0;
int i,j,row,col;
int rowcount, colcount;
printf("\n how many rows and colums are there? separate by a space: ");
scanf("%d %d",&row, &col);
/* while(fscanf(TableFilePtr,"%c",&words)!= EOF)
{
printf("%c",words);
}
*/
/*for (colcount=0;colcount<col;colcount++)
{
for (rowcount=0;rowcount<row;rowcount++)
{
printf("%c ",words);
}
printf("\n");
}
*/
for(i=0;i<row;i++){
for(j=0;j<col;j++){
fscanf(TableFilePtr, "%c %s\n",&puzzle[i]][j]);
//puzzle[i][j]=words;
// printf("%c ", puzzle[i][j]);
}
printf("\n");
}
}
The commented area at the end (just the starting part) works to simply print out the text file in the compiler. I would like to get it to be in a 2d array though.
for(colcount=0;colcount<col;colcount++){...}
I would do something like this (I didn't use all of your exact variable names but you get the idea):
char puzzle[MAXROWS][MAXCOLS], line[MAXCOLS];
FILE *infile;
int cols = 0, rows=0;
/* ... */
infile = fopen(TableFileName, "r");
while(fgets(line, sizeof line, infile) != NULL)
{
for(cols=0; cols<(strlen(line)-1); ++cols)
{
puzzle[rows][cols] = line[cols];
}
/* I'd give myself enough room in the 2d array for a NULL char in
the last col of every row. You can check for it later to make sure
you're not going out of bounds. You could also
printf("%s\n", puzzle[row]); to print an entire row */
puzzle[rows][cols] = '\0';
++rows;
}
Edit: much shorter version will have newline and NULL chars at the end of each row unless you manually pick them off. You may have to tweak puzzle[][] (use MAXCOLS +/- n or some such) to make it work for you.
for(c=0; c<MAXROWS; ++c){
fgets(puzzle[rows], sizeof puzzle[rows], infile);
}
At the end of the loop, puzzle[x][y] should be a 2d array of chars from your input file. Hope that helps.

Parsing text in C

I have a file like this:
...
words 13
more words 21
even more words 4
...
(General format is a string of non-digits, then a space, then any number of digits and a newline)
and I'd like to parse every line, putting the words into one field of the structure, and the number into the other. Right now I am using an ugly hack of reading the line while the chars are not numbers, then reading the rest. I believe there's a clearer way.
Edit: You can use pNum-buf to get the length of the alphabetical part of the string, and use strncpy() to copy that into another buffer. Be sure to add a '\0' to the end of the destination buffer. I would insert this code before the pNum++.
int len = pNum-buf;
strncpy(newBuf, buf, len-1);
newBuf[len] = '\0';
You could read the entire line into a buffer and then use:
char *pNum;
if (pNum = strrchr(buf, ' ')) {
pNum++;
}
to get a pointer to the number field.
fscanf(file, "%s %d", word, &value);
This gets the values directly into a string and an integer, and copes with variations in whitespace and numerical formats, etc.
Edit
Ooops, I forgot that you had spaces between the words.
In that case, I'd do the following. (Note that it truncates the original text in 'line')
// Scan to find the last space in the line
char *p = line;
char *lastSpace = null;
while(*p != '\0')
{
if (*p == ' ')
lastSpace = p;
p++;
}
if (lastSpace == null)
return("parse error");
// Replace the last space in the line with a NUL
*lastSpace = '\0';
// Advance past the NUL to the first character of the number field
lastSpace++;
char *word = text;
int number = atoi(lastSpace);
You can solve this using stdlib functions, but the above is likely to be more efficient as you're only searching for the characters you are interested in.
Given the description, I think I'd use a variant of this (now tested) C99 code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>
struct word_number
{
char word[128];
long number;
};
int read_word_number(FILE *fp, struct word_number *wnp)
{
char buffer[140];
if (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), fp) == 0)
return EOF;
size_t len = strlen(buffer);
if (buffer[len-1] != '\n') // Error if line too long to fit
return EOF;
buffer[--len] = '\0';
char *num = &buffer[len-1];
while (num > buffer && !isspace((unsigned char)*num))
num--;
if (num == buffer) // No space in input data
return EOF;
char *end;
wnp->number = strtol(num+1, &end, 0);
if (*end != '\0') // Invalid number as last word on line
return EOF;
*num = '\0';
if (num - buffer >= sizeof(wnp->word)) // Non-number part too long
return EOF;
memcpy(wnp->word, buffer, num - buffer);
return(0);
}
int main(void)
{
struct word_number wn;
while (read_word_number(stdin, &wn) != EOF)
printf("Word <<%s>> Number %ld\n", wn.word, wn.number);
return(0);
}
You could improve the error reporting by returning different values for different problems.
You could make it work with dynamically allocated memory for the word portion of the lines.
You could make it work with longer lines than I allow.
You could scan backwards over digits instead of non-spaces - but this allows the user to write "abc 0x123" and the hex value is handled correctly.
You might prefer to ensure there are no digits in the word part; this code does not care.
You could try using strtok() to tokenize each line, and then check whether each token is a number or a word (a fairly trivial check once you have the token string - just look at the first character of the token).
Assuming that the number is immediately followed by '\n'.
you can read each line to chars buffer, use sscanf("%d") on the entire line to get the number, and then calculate the number of chars that this number takes at the end of the text string.
Depending on how complex your strings become you may want to use the PCRE library. At least that way you can compile a perl'ish regular expression to split your lines. It may be overkill though.
Given the description, here's what I'd do: read each line as a single string using fgets() (making sure the target buffer is large enough), then split the line using strtok(). To determine if each token is a word or a number, I'd use strtol() to attempt the conversion and check the error condition. Example:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
/**
* Read the next line from the file, splitting the tokens into
* multiple strings and a single integer. Assumes input lines
* never exceed MAX_LINE_LENGTH and each individual string never
* exceeds MAX_STR_SIZE. Otherwise things get a little more
* interesting. Also assumes that the integer is the last
* thing on each line.
*/
int getNextLine(FILE *in, char (*strs)[MAX_STR_SIZE], int *numStrings, int *value)
{
char buffer[MAX_LINE_LENGTH];
int rval = 1;
if (fgets(buffer, buffer, sizeof buffer))
{
char *token = strtok(buffer, " ");
*numStrings = 0;
while (token)
{
char *chk;
*value = (int) strtol(token, &chk, 10);
if (*chk != 0 && *chk != '\n')
{
strcpy(strs[(*numStrings)++], token);
}
token = strtok(NULL, " ");
}
}
else
{
/**
* fgets() hit either EOF or error; either way return 0
*/
rval = 0;
}
return rval;
}
/**
* sample main
*/
int main(void)
{
FILE *input;
char strings[MAX_NUM_STRINGS][MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
int numStrings;
int value;
input = fopen("datafile.txt", "r");
if (input)
{
while (getNextLine(input, &strings, &numStrings, &value))
{
/**
* Do something with strings and value here
*/
}
fclose(input);
}
return 0;
}

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