Working through H&K... Strange Output

[Ghiofish]

Hi All!

I'm working though H&K, specifically, I'm looking at exercise 1-8 (Write a program that counts blanks, tabs, and lines.) My code seems to count spaces and lines correctly, but for some reason the number of tabs always ends up at around 4,100,000.

Any ideas as to what might be wrong?

#include <stdio.h>

/*Exerceise 1-8 from H&K- counts spaces, tabs, and lines */
int main () {

int c, blank, tab, newline = 0;

while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
if (c == ' ')
  ++blank;

else if (c == '\t')
  ++tab;

else if (c == '\n')
  ++newline;

}

printf("\nSpaces: %d\nTabs: %d\nLines: %d\n", blank, tab, newline);

}

Thanks for any help you may be able to render in advance!

[sugarfree]

only newline equals zero, the rest have the value of some junk in memory.

[Ghiofish]

Oh, I see. I could have sworn you could initialize variables like that. Ha, it's been a long time I suppose.

Thanks! I'm sure I'll be back with more dumb questions soon enough.

[sugarfree]

maybe you confused with c = blank = tab = newline = 0.

[jdragyn]

You can, but you have to be explicit

int c, blank = 0, tab = 0, newline = 0;

[Ghiofish]

I think I'll just use this method from now on:

int a, b, c;

a = 0;
b = 0;
c = 0;

Ok so now I'm on exercise 1-9 and I have another issue... The idea is to get input from the keyboard, and print that input to the screen replacing any series of blanks with one blank.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {

  int c = 0;
  
  while ((c = getchar()) != EOF)
    if (c != ' ')
      putchar(c);
    else {
     putchar (' ');
     c = getchar(); //not sure about this
    
     if (c != ' ')
       putchar(c);
    
    }
}

Currently, it works properly with a string with 2 spaces, such as "abc abcd", but with a string like "jfjf <several spaces> jfjf" it seems to simply cut the number of blank spaces in half instead of reducing the number to one.

I've looked through this code several times, and it looks like it should work. However, I don't understand much about the inner workings of getchar(). Is this the proper method to tell getchar() to skip a character and go to the next one, or does calling c = getchar() again cause it to look for new input...?

[sugarfree]

You just need to call putchar(' ') once for every line, so why don't you use a flag to check if you already have put a bllank in the current line?

your first if statement if ok, the else is wrong. You only need your first getchar.

[itCbitC]

what is H&K???

[fronty]

Heckler & Koch. Or Helsingin Kauppiaat. Firearms or meat or C code, same stuff.

[Ghiofish]

Another noob question!

#include <stdio.h>

int main () { 

int c = 0;

while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {

  if (c == '\t') {
    putchar('\\');
    putchar('t');
  } else if (c == '\b') {
    putchar('\\');
    putchar('b');
  } else {
  putchar (c);
  }
}

return 0;
}

This code is supposed to replace tabs with "\t" and backspaces with "\b". Works correctly with the tabs, but not the back slashes. When I type the backspace, is a backspace character actually added, or does it simply erase the previous character?

[quzah]

It probably doesn't actually do either. Most input is line buffered, meaning it doesn't actually end up sending \b to your program. Write \b to a file, then read it back in, and run it through the above loop, and you'll more than likely get the correct input. (Or write it out, and pipe it in.)


Quzah.

[Ghiofish]

It probably doesn't actually do either. Most input is line buffered, meaning it doesn't actually end up sending \b to your program. Write \b to a file, then read it back in, and run it through the above loop, and you'll more than likely get the correct input. (Or write it out, and pipe it in.)

Quzah.

Hmm... I was afraid of that. I guess I'll have to learn how to input from a file before testing that one.

I really hate to keep bothering you guys, but what about this one?

#include <stdio.h>

#define IN  1
#define OUT 0

int main () {
  
  /* counts lines, words, and characters in input */
  
  int c, nl, nw, nc, state;
  nl = nw = nc = 0;
  
  state = OUT;
  
  while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
    ++nc;
    
    if ( c == '\n')
      ++nl;
    
    if (c == ' ' || c == '\n' || c == '\t')
      state = OUT;
    else if (state == OUT) {
      state == IN;
      ++nw;
    }
  

  }
printf("%d %d %d\n", nc, nl, nw);

}

(Counts characters, words, and lines then outputs this to the screen.) For some reason this program always tells me I'm getting 30 or so more words than I actually input. As far as I can tell, this is the exact code from the book. What's going on here?

[Adak]

Remove one equal sign from this line:

state == IN