Help with reading strings and opening files PLEASE

I am having a whole lot of trouble so far with this program. The program prompts the user for the name of a file, which contains floating point numbers, to be opened for reading and store the values into an array. The rest of the program is done...I think. My problem is that everytime I try to run the program it prints my error message for not being able to open the file and exits. Where did I mess up with the reading of the filename or opening the file or I dont know

I know the return values for fopen are EOF, NULL and I think 0 or nothing if it works but it still keeps tripping up on the NULL case I guess

This is one of my first programs and ANY help is much appreciated

THANKS

Ive tried many things so far and this is what I have at the moment.....

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define FLUSH while (fgetc(fileDataIn) != '\n')
#define MAX_SIZE_NAME 100
#define MAX_SIZE_FILE 100


int main(void)
{
float data[MAX_SIZE_FILE];
char fileName[MAX_SIZE_NAME];
int fileLength;
float h;
int i;
FILE *fileDataIn;
int result;

printf("Enter File Name: ");
scanf("%s", &fileName);

//open file
fileDataIn = fopen(fileName, "r");

if (fileDataIn == NULL)
	{
	printf("Error: Could not open file %s for read.", fileName);
	exit(1);        
	} //if


	else
         while (fscanf(fileDataIn, "%f", &h) != EOF)
		{
		  for (i = 0; result = fscanf(fileDataIn, "%f", &h); i++)
           	  	if (result != 1)
			{
			  FLUSH;
			} //if
		
	 	data[i] = h; //should store each value read in into consecutive locations in data
         	fileLength = i + 1;

         	} // while
			
 fclose(fileDataIn);


return 0;
}

>> I know the return values for fopen are EOF, NULL and I think 0 or nothing if it works but it still keeps tripping up on the NULL case I guess

Not exactly... fopen() either returns a handle or NULL if something went awry.

This next bit of code is kind of shady. You need to be very careful not to cause buffer overflows when using scanf().

Code:

  printf("Enter File Name: ");
  scanf("%s", &fileName);

Instead perhaps you could do something like this:

Code:

  printf("Enter File Name: ");
  fgets(fileName, sizeof(fileName), stdin);
  strtok(fileName, "\n");

Moving along to where you confuse me...

Code:

  for (i = 0; result = fscanf(fileDataIn, "%f", &h); i++)
    if (result != 1)
    {
       FLUSH;
    }

I don't comprehend your logic there.

Thanks for the quick reply master5001

I added your ideas with fgets and strtok but still get the same error.

Could I be saving the .txt file incorrectly?

For that confusing code part..
I was trying to increment i, which would control where in data[] the value would be stored. In my head the code should read in a number and store it in h. Then data[i] = h should store those values in different spots as i is incremented. I think if fscanf returns 0 then im trying to flush out the \n from the file to get to the rest of the data.

The data in the file looks like this

89
23.5
90
1
0
-5.25
10000
25123.90
54321.23
6
55
76
33
104
145
204
32
445
523
-2
-64.6
3
76
33

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define FLUSH while (fgetc(fileDataIn) != '\n')
#define MAX_SIZE_NAME 100
#define MAX_SIZE_FILE 100


int main(void)
{
  float data[MAX_SIZE_FILE];
  char fileName[MAX_SIZE_NAME];
  int fileLength = 0;
  float h;
  FILE *fileDataIn;
  int result;

  printf("Enter File Name: ");
  fgets(fileName, sizeof(fileName), stdin);
  strtok(fileName, "\n");

  //open file
  fileDataIn = fopen(fileName, "r");

  if (fileDataIn == NULL)
  {
    printf("Error: Could not open file \"&#37;s\" for read.", fileName);
    return EXIT_FAILURE;
  } //if
  /* else <- Why? */
  while ((result = fscanf(fileDataIn, "%f", &h)) != EOF)
  {
    if (result != 1)
    {
      FLUSH;
    } //if	
    data[fileLength++] = h; //should store each value read in into consecutive locations in data
     
  } // while

  fclose(fileDataIn);
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

To be honest, I would write a function that counts lines, and create your data buffer dynamically.

Example:

Code:

size_t count_lines(FILE *file)
{
  size_t n;
  char buffer[4096]; /* 4k should be big enough */

  for(n = 0; fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), file); ++n)
    ; /* nothing to do here */

  rewind(file);
  return n;
}

Hey thanks again
Im gonna work on this more later. Hopefully it all goes well!

#define FLUSH while (fgetc(fileDataIn) != '\n')

what will happen with your macro call when the end of file is reached?
what will happen with your macro in the code like

Code:

do
   FLUSH;
while(condition);

?

what will happen with your macro if the variable fileDataIn will be renamed in the code?

Thanks I got it all working now. Turns out the main problem was how I was saving the file.

But now I have run into another problem. When I read all of the values into my array I am somehow reading an extra zero. I think it is at the beginning when I store the numbers but im not sure. It adds a zero to my array whenever the file does not even contain a zero.

Any help would again be great!

Code:

#include <stdio.h>   
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define FLUSH while (fgetc(fp) != '\n')
#define MAX_SIZE_NAME 100
#define MAX_SIZE_FILE 100



int main(void)
{
// local declarations in main

float data[MAX_SIZE_FILE];
char fileName[MAX_SIZE_NAME];
int fileLength = 0;
float h;
FILE* fp;
int result;
        //for sorting
int current;
int walker;
float temp;
        //for printing table
int numPrinted = 0;
int j;
        //for average
int k;
float sum = 0;
float average;
        
        
// first print my name
printf("\nNAME: Nathan Vazquez\n\n");
        

printf("Enter File Name: ");
fgets(fileName, sizeof(fileName), stdin);
strtok(fileName, "\n");

//open file
fp = fopen(fileName, "r");
if (fp == NULL)
  {
  printf("Error: Could not open file %s for read.", fileName);
  return EXIT_FAILURE;
  } //if
 while ((result = fscanf(fp, "%f", &h)) != EOF && (fileLength < 100))
        {
          if (result != 1)
           {
             FLUSH;  
           } //if


        data[fileLength++] = h;
        
        } // while

//done opening and storing file



//sort data in file
for(current = 0; current < fileLength; current++)
        {
        //inner loop: Bubble up one element each pass
   
        for (walker = fileLength; walker > current; walker--) 
  
                if (data[walker] < data[walker - 1])
                  {
                        temp                    = data[walker];
                        data[walker]            = data[walker - 1];
                        data[walker - 1]        = temp;
                  } //closes if
        } //closes outer for loop
             
//print out data 
printf("\n\n");
for (j = 0; j < fileLength; j++)
        {
          numPrinted++;
          printf("  %8.2f ", data[j]);

        if (numPrinted >= 5)
                {
                  printf("\n");
                  numPrinted = 0;
                } //closes if

         } // closes for
         
printf("\n\n"); // provides the one line gap between data table and results
   
//prints out the number of elements in the file
printf("There were %d numbers found in file %s\n", fileLength, fileName);
                
// Smallest number found
printf("The smallest number found was: \t%8.2f\n", data[0]);  
//Largest number found
printf("The largest number found was: \t%8.2f\n", data[fileLength]);
             
for(k = 0; k < fileLength; k++)
        {
          sum = sum + data[k];  
        } //for
          
        average = sum / fileLength;   

printf("The average of the values is: \t%8.2f\n", average);
                 
                  
fclose(fp);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;

}

Originally Posted by vart

what will happen with your macro call when the end of file is reached?
what will happen with your macro in the code like

Code:

do
   FLUSH;
while(condition);

?

what will happen with your macro if the variable fileDataIn will be renamed in the code?

Hmmm such things can also result in random crap happening... like I don't know... oh lets say an extra zero....