#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
int c;
while ((c = getchar()) != EOF)
putchar(c);
}
In the above code, which character will break the loop?
I am new to C, please help me.
Also, what is it meant by this error:
codec5.c:8:2: warning: no newline at end of file
The warning just means that you need to have a new line at the end of your source code. Put your cursor at the last } in your file at the end of main() and press enter.
You need to check for a specific character to end the program if you are not loading from a file. If you pipe (|) (< in Windows) a file into your program, then the program should end. If your program is named test.exe and your input file is foo.txt, try running test.exe < foo.txt (make sure they are in the same directory).
The error is solved by putting a newline at the end of the file (put the cursor behind the } and press enter).
I think the loop is broken with Ctrl+Z, but I'm not sure about that.
It is a special constant defined in stdio.h which means the end of the file.
codec5.c:8:2: warning: no newline at end of file
Sounds like you don't have a \n at the end of your file :)
Related
Following "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie, I am trying to enter the program described on page 18 (see below).
The only changes I made were to add "int" before "main" and "return 0;" before closing the brackets.
When I run the program in Terminal (Mac OS 10.15) I am prompted to enter an input. After I enter the input I am prompted to enter an input again - the "printf" line is apparently never reached and so the number of characters is never displayed.
Can anyone help me with the reason why EOF is never reached letting the while loop exit? I read some other answers suggesting CTRL + D or CTRL + Z, but I thought this shouldn't require extra input. (I was able to get the loop to exit with CTRL + D).
I have also pasted my code and the terminal window below.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
long nc;
nc = 0;
while( getchar() != EOF )
++nc;
printf("%ld\n", nc);
return 0;
}
From pg. 18 of "The C Programming Language
My screenshot
You already have the correct answer: when entering data at the terminal, Ctrl-D is the proper way to indicate "I'm done" to the terminal driver so that it sends an EOF condition to your program (Ctrl-Z on Windows). Ctrl-C breaks out of your program early.
If you ran this program with a redirect from an actual file, it would properly count the characters in the file.
EOF means end of file; newlines are not ends of files. You need to press CTRL+D to give the terminal an EOF signal, that's why you're never exiting your while loop.
If you were to give a file as input instead of through the command line, then you would not need to press CTRL+D
Adding to the two good answers I would stress that EOF does not naturally occur in stdin like in other files, a signal from the user must be sent, as you already stated in your question.
Think about it for a second, your input is a number of characters and in the end you press Enter, so the last character present in stdin is a newline character not EOF. For it to work EOF would have to be inputed, and that is precisely what Ctrl+D for Linux/Mac or Ctrl+Z for Windows, do.
As #DavidC.Rankin correctly pointed out EOF can also occur on stdin through bash piping e.g. echo "count this" | ./count or redirecting e.g. ./count < somefile, where somefile would be a text file with the contents you want to pass to stdin.
By the way Ctrl+C just ends the program, whereas Ctrl+D ends the loop and continues the program execution.
For a single line input from the command line you can use something like:
int c = 0;
while((c = getchar()) != EOF && c != '\n'){
++nc;
}
So I started to learn C using the ANSI C book. One of the early exercises in the book is to write a program that takes text input and prints every word on a new line, simple enough. So i did:
#include <stdio.h>
#define IN 1
#define OUT 0
main() {
int c;
int state;
state = OUT;
while((c = getchar()) != EOF){
if(c != ' ' && c != '\n' && c != '\t'){
state = IN;
}else if(state == IN){
state = OUT;
putchar('\n');
}
if(state == IN)
putchar(c);
}
getchar();
}
The thing is that while the program works fine it won't break from the while loop if I enter EOF(Ctrl+Z on windows) as the last char of a line or in the middle of it.
So I found an answer here.
What I learned is that the (Ctrl+Z) char is some sort of signal to end the stream and it must be on a new line for getchar() to return EOF. While this is all good and it kinda helped I really want to know why is it necessary for the EOF to be on its own line?
The problem you are having is related to your command line terminal and has nothing to do with the end of file marker itself. Instead of sending characters to the program as you type them, most terminals will wait until you finish a whole line before sending what you type to the program.
You can test this by having the input come from a text file instead of being typed by hand. You should be able to end the input file without a newline without any problems.
./myprogram.exe < input.txt
By the way, the answer you linked to also points out that EOF is not a character that is actually in your input stream, so there is no way for it to come "before" a "\n". EOF is just the value that getchar returns once there are no characters left to be read.
When reading from a tty device (such as stdin for a program running in a console or terminal window) the terminal is in so-called cooked mode. In this mode, some level of line editing facilities are provided, allowing the user to backspace and change what has been typed.
The characters that are typed are not returned to the program until after return has been pressed.
It is possible to do this by placing the terminal in 'raw' mode. Unfortunately it seems this is not well standardised though, so it is somewhat system specific. The answers to this question have some examples for various platforms.
I am trying to get a basic understanding on how to use fputc in C. I have read some documentation that is out there and believed I had it right. But every time I try to use the script I wrote by executing ./fputc > test.txt where text.txt is a text file with one line of text.
This is my script:
int
main(int argc, char **argv){
int ch;
FILE *input;
input = fopen("text.txt", "w+");
while ((ch = getchar()) != EOF){
fputc(ch, input);
}
fclose(input);
return 0;
}
I get no errors on compilation and for some reason the script does not reach EOF at the end of the text file. Shouldn't the getchar return EOF when it reached the end of the text file?
The text (text.txt) file does not appear to be edited, although it is created. So somewhere in my while loop something is going wrong.
I am new to C programming (if you couldn't tell) and this little script has me befuddled.
Any help would be appreciated, or any links to sites with further detail would also be great.
Cheers,
S.
What you in essence say is:
Console: Run my_program and write anything it outputs to test.txt.
Program: Open text.txt and write any input to stdin to that file.
Your console normally have three standard streams stdin, stdout and stderr. These streams you can redirect. If you are on Windows also look at i.e. redirection.
When you say ./my_prog > test.txt, what you tell your console, (not my_prog), is to write anything my_prog writes to stdout to the file test.txt.
If you in your code say i.e. printf("Hello");, then Hello would be written to the file test.txt.
If you had turned your redirection around by saying ./my_prog < test.txt instead, would be; stream the file test.txt to my_prog. Which, in turn, if there was any text in test.txt would result in a copy of test.txt to text.txt.
Now in your code you say:
int main(void)
{
int ch;
FILE *input;
/* Here you open a handle to the file text.txt for reading and writing */
input = fopen("text.txt", "w+");
while ((ch = getchar()) != EOF) { /* get next char from stdin */
fputc(ch, input); /* write that char to the handle input */
}
fclose(input); /* close the handle */
return 0;
}
So what happens, the way you run it, is:
In your code:
Open text.txt
Wait for input (data entered to stdin) - typically user entering text to console, passed to program when Enter is pressed.
In console:
Redirect anything from my_prog to test.txt.
You say:
the script does not reach EOF
Well, as it reads from stdin it will only (not without exception) get EOF under two conditions.
If you redirect a file to your program. I.e. ./my_prog < foo.txt (notice <, not >).
- What would happen then is that my_prog would read the data from the file foo.txt and when that file ends your program would receive a EOF. And, hence quit.
If you manually enter EOF to stdin.
- On Linux and OSX Ctrl-D, on Windows Ctrl-Z
Now, if you test this by typing text to console remember that write actions like fputc()is buffered. What this mean is that the data is not written to the file right away, but only when a given amount of data is in buffer, fflush() is called, stream is closed, you turn off buffering, etc.
Also; if you run your program. Enter text, enter some more text, and then hit Ctrl-C to abort the program it is a big chance you end with no data in your text.txt.
The reason for this is that the program is killed and thereby fclose() never called, and hence no flush to file.
On your further endeavors in programming it would be a very good idea to make a habit of not presuming anything. I.e. do not presume fopen() is OK.
FILE *fh;
char *outfile = "foo.txt";
if ((fh = fopen(outfile, "w")) == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr,
"Unable to open file %s\n --",
outfile);
perror(" fopen() ");
return 1;
}
Most functions has a way to check if operation was a success. I.e:
if (fputc(ch, fh) != ch) { err ...
This will make your code a lot safer, give you hints on where it fails etc.
Some links:
Look at redirection links at top of post.
Look at the functions in stdio.h (good overview), stdio.h (examples etc.). I.e.:
stdin
stdout
stderr
fopen()
fflush()
setvbuf()
setbuf()
...
getchar returns the next character from the standard input (stdin).
It is equivalent to getc with stdin as its argument.
Hence, your code reads from standard input instead of FILE* input.
Use fgetc here.
fgetc returns the character currently pointed by the internal file position indicator of the specified stream. The internal file position indicator is then advanced by one character to point to the next character.
So, Use fgetc to read from a file:
while ((ch = fgetc(input)) != EOF)
your program and the shell are both writing the same file. you should remove the output redirection > test.txt from your command line
I'm using NetBeans MinGW to compile simple c programs(I'm new at this).
My problem is that I have this simple code
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
int c,i=0;
while((c=getchar())!=EOF){
i++;
}
printf("%d",i);
return 0;
}
and when I try to end input like this:
hello^Z [enter]
it doesn't do it, I need to re-enter
^Z[enter]
to end it.
I'd appreciate that you tell me why this happens.
Thanks in advance
C input is line-oriented by default. Ending a line with the EOF character (^Z on Windows, ^D on Unix) ends the line (without a trailing newline) but doesn't actually signal end of file; the end of file condition is signaled when it's encountered on the next read, i.e. at the beginning of a line.
Just the way the console handles input
Ctrl-Z on a UNIX system would be an interrupt to let you suspend the process, so I guess it is a Windows console.
When you Ctrl-Z after the characters it probably does treat this as an "End" which is Ctrl-Z on its own.
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
char read = ' ';
while ((read = getchar()) != '\n') {
putchar(read);
}
return 0;
}
My input is f (followed by an enter, of course). I expect getchar() to ask for input again, but instead the program is terminated. How come? How can I fix this?
The Terminal can sometimes be a little bit confusing. You should change your program to:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
int read;
while ((read = getchar()) != EOF) {
putchar(read);
}
return 0;
}
This will read until getchar reads EOF (most of the time this macro expands to -1) from the terminal. getchar returns an int so you should make your variable 'read' into an integer, so you can check for EOF. You can send an EOF from your terminal on Linux with ^D and I think on windows with ^Z (?).
To explain a little bit what happens. In your program the expression
(read = getchar()) !='\n'
will be true as long as no '\n' is read from the buffer. The problem is, to get the buffer to your program, you have to hit enter which corresponds to '\n'.
The following steps happen when your program is invoked in the terminal:
~$\a.out
this starts your program
(empty line)
getchar() made a system call to get an input from the terminal and the terminal takes over
f
you made an input in the terminal. The 'f' is written into the buffer and echoed back on the terminal, your program has no idea about the character yet.
f
f~$
You hit enter. Your buffer contains now 'f\n'. The 'enter' also signals to the terminal, that it should return to your program. Your progam
reads the buffer and will find the f and put it onto the screen and then find an '\n' and immediatley stop the loop and end your program.
This would be standard behaviour of most terminals. You can change this behaviour, but that would depend on your OS.
getchar() returns the next character from the input stream. This includes of course also newlines etc. The fact that you don't see progress in your loop unless you press 'Enter' is caused by the fact that your file I/O (working on stdin) doesn't hand over the input buffer to getchar() unless it detects the '\n' at the end of the buffer. Your routine first blocks then handles the two keystrokes in one rush, terminating, like you specified it, with the appearance of '\n' in the input stream. Facit: getchar() will not remove the '\n' from the input stream (why should it?).
after f you are putting "enter" which is '/n'.
so the loop ends there.
if you want to take another character just keep on putting them one after the other as soon as enter is pressed the loop exits.
You've programmed it so the loop ends when you read a \n (enter), and you then return 0; from main which exits the program.
Perhaps you want something like
while ((read = getchar()) != EOF) {
putchar(read);
}
On nx terminals you can press Control-D which will tell the tty driver to return the input buffer to the app reading it. That's why ^D on a new line ends input - it causes the tty to return zero bytes, which the app interprets as end-of-file. But it also works anywhere on a line.