Can someone please help deadline tomorow

**scott1990** · 06-01-2010

The search is working great now MK27 thanks. Regarding fflush(stdin) my lecturer does use this but he isnt the most experienced C user (his words) so i think i should include it to make him happy.

Now all i've got to do is implement error handling.

This is my attempt which doesnt work as usual lol

Code:

void search_by_title()
{
	system("cls");
	
	printf ("Please enter the title of the book you are searching for: ");
	scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);

	record_file = fopen("C:\\bookfile.bin","rb");

	while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) {
		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0)
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
		
        else 
            printf("No book with this title exists in our database,please re-enter:	");
	        scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);
    }  
	fclose(record_file);

I think i need a loop so when the user enters a non existent title, it says no title exists please re-enter and it goes back to the start. I dont know how to do this though any ideas?

**whiteflags** · 06-01-2010

Cool, you read my whole repost. G.J.

I want to address fflush (stdin); before anything: well, appease your teacher, but now that you know it is wrong, don't develop a habit. In a strictly standard implementation, it's not defined to work with input streams. You can actually 'fflush' stdin by reading characters and ignoring them until you find a '\n'.

Movin' on.

Code:

while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) {
		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0)
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
		
        else 
            printf("No book with this title exists in our database,please re-enter:	");
	        scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);
    }

Your if-then-else blocks wont work the way you expect. Formatted indentation is not required, so C denotes blocks with curly braces.

Nevertheless I don't think that alone will fix the problem. Your hunch is right: it involves rewind (record_file); when you restart, and a loop around the loop that searches which continues until a successful search happens. Or, you could just let the user explicitly start a new search.

Anyway, today is the day. If you actually read this scott, I hope you start your homework earlier in the future.

**jeffcobb** · 06-01-2010

No 'tmp' is an instance of record_structure. If you are using a plain C compiler you may need to do:

Code:

struct record_structure tmp; // create a working variable
bool bFoundIt = false; // create a success flag and init to false for now..
char searchTitle[SIZE+1]; // create a buffer to hold the search string
memset(searchTitle, 0, SIZE+1);// initialize is to zero
strcpy(searchTitle, "My Book"); // or whatever
//open the file in binary/read mode
while(fread(&tmp, sizeof(struct record_structure), 0, record_file))
{
      if(strcmp(searchTitle, tmp.Title) == 0)
      {
           // we have a winner, print out the rest of tmp's fields
           bFoundIt = true;
      }
      else
      {
           //keep searching
           // no actual code here
      }
}
if( bFoundIt == true)
{
    printf("Success!\n");
}
else
{
     printf("Type more carefully next time idiot\n"); // I was always hard on users.
}

**jeffcobb** · 06-01-2010

Sorry to answer so late in the thread; to be honest it was such a joy to read a call for help from someone actually willing to try to help themselves. Regardless of the grade you get on this I would give you an A (or whatever they do these days) and expect great things from you in the future. Maybe I am just cranky but after reading all the "gimmecodez!", this is SO refreshing...

**MK27** · 06-02-2010

Originally Posted by scott1990

I think i need a loop so when the user enters a non existent title, it says no title exists please re-enter and it goes back to the start. I dont know how to do this though any ideas?

Place a flag inside the while loop. As whiteflags implies, you can't do this check until after the loop is finished:

Code:

	int found = 0;  // boolean flag   
[....]
	while ((fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file))) {
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0) {
			printf("Title: %s Author %s ISBN %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
		}
	}
	fclose(record_file);
	if (!flag) // no title was found

Originally Posted by scott1990

Regarding fflush(stdin) my lecturer does use this but he isnt the most experienced C user (his words) so i think i should include it to make him happy.

Egads. Well, I guess it's fine for now. It can work, just it does not have to -- there is no "proper" way to use fflush(stdin) because the C standard refers to it as undefined behavior. Depending on your instructor's personality, it might be worthwhile to draw attention to this fact:

Originally Posted by ISO C Standard

fflush

If stream points to an output stream or an update
stream in which the most recent operation was not input, the
fflush function causes any unwritten data for that stream to
be delivered to the host environment to be written to the
file; otherwise, the behavior is undefined.

since s/he's teaching people a bad habit -- at best, it is a way of "tricking" the compiler, and it may not produce the same results everywhere -- another compiler could just as easily do something completely different (and equally "undefined"). This is the beginning of section 7.19.5.2 in the C99 standard or 7.13.5.2 in the C89 standard.

Of course, not everyone in authority is interested in criticism from below

**scott1990** · 06-02-2010

Hey MK27 i've placed the flag into my code but when i type a non existent title in it just does nothing basically :S, also in your last post you've put this in the corner of your code [. . . .] what does this mean ??

Code:

void search_by_title()
{
	system("cls");
	
	printf ("Please enter the title of the book you are searching for: ");
	scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);

	record_file = fopen("C:\\bookfile.bin","rb");

	int flag = 0;
    
    while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) 
		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0){
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
    }  
        if (!flag) {
	        printf("\nThe title you entered does not exist please re-enter: ");
    }    	
         fclose(record_file);

**KBriggs** · 06-02-2010

I am having a bit of trouble reading what your while loop is supposed to be doing because you are missing braces to go with it. Maybe you can get away with it because only the if statement is supposed to be inside it (?) but it's good to get in the habit of using braces even when you don't need to, I find.

To clarify your bug: when you enter a nonexistent title, does it print the cue for the user to re-enter? Or does it just exit?

**scott1990** · 06-02-2010

Originally Posted by KBriggs

I am having a bit of trouble reading what your while loop is supposed to be doing because you are missing braces to go with it. Maybe you can get away with it because only the if statement is supposed to be inside it (?) but it's good to get in the habit of using braces even when you don't need to, I find.

To clarify your bug: when you enter a nonexistent title, does it print the cue for the user to re-enter? Or does it just exit?

It does print the cue for the cursor to re-enter but when i type in an existent title it doesnt show anything, just goes to a newline.

**KBriggs** · 06-02-2010

That would be because there is nothing after the print line telling it to go back and search again with the new title.

What you could do is put another while loop around all of that, like so:

Code:

while (!flag)
{
       while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) 
       {		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0)
                {
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
               }
       }  

       printf("\nThe title you entered does not exist please re-enter: ");
       [do whatever you need to do here to make the newly entered title enter the  variable searchtitle]
 }

Then, if the search title is not found, flag will remain 0 and it will start the loop over again. You may need to rewind the file back to the beginning before you enter the second while loop. I am sorry for the non-code in brackets there, but I have only just started following the thread and i am not sure how you are storing in searchtitle, so I'll leave that detail to you.

**scott1990** · 06-02-2010

Originally Posted by KBriggs

That would be because there is nothing after the print line telling it to go back and search again with the new title.

What you could do is put another while loop around all of that, like so:

Code:

while (!flag)
{
       while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) 
       {		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0)
                {
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
               }
       }  

       printf("\nThe title you entered does not exist please re-enter: ");
       [do whatever you need to do here to make the newly entered title enter the  variable searchtitle]
 }

Then, if the search title is not found, flag will remain 0 and it will start the loop over again. You may need to rewind the file back to the beginning before you enter the second while loop. I am sorry for the non-code in brackets there, but I have only just started following the thread and i am not sure how you are storing in searchtitle, so I'll leave that detail to you.

Hi KBriggs i have made your changes but i just feel i've not entered it correctlycan you look over it please.

Code:

while (!flag)
{
    while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) {
		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0){
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
    }  
           printf("\nThe title you entered does not exist please re-enter: ");
           scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);
        	
    }    
}     
         fclose(record_file);

**KBriggs** · 06-02-2010

If it does not seem to be reading the file over the second time, you will have to rewind it to the beginning each iteration of the while(!flag) loop.

Code:

while (!flag)
{
    rewind(record_file);
    while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) {
		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0){
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
    }  
           printf("\nThe title you entered does not exist please re-enter: ");
           scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);
        	
    }    
}     
         fclose(record_file);

Try that, and see if it works.

OOPS: Sorry I made a mistake. You do need that second if, because otherwise if will ask you to enter a new search title regardless of whether it found one already: here is the correction:

Code:

while (!flag)
{
    rewind(record_file);
    while (fread(&tmp,sizeof(record_structure),1,record_file)) {
		
		if (strcmp(searchtitle,tmp.Title) == 0){
			printf("\n\n\nTitle: %s \t\tAuthor: %s \t\tISBN: %s\n", tmp.Title, tmp.Author, tmp.ISBN);
			flag = 1;
			break;
    }  

        	
    }   
        if(!flag)
        {
             printf("\nThe title you entered does not exist please re-enter: ");
             scanf("%[^\n]%*c", searchtitle);
        } 
}     
         fclose(record_file);

**scott1990** · 06-02-2010

I've tried your suggestion KBriggs but no matter what i enter it just says "The title you entered does not exist please re-enter" and it just keeps looping through that.

**KBriggs** · 06-02-2010

Did you see my correction to the code I posted in the post above this?

**scott1990** · 06-02-2010

Originally Posted by KBriggs

Did you see my correction to the code I posted in the post above this?

Yes this is the code i am using, thanks for your help btw

**KBriggs** · 06-02-2010

Hum...

Well if it is never finding a title match there may be something wrong with the way you are reading in your titles.

Trying printing out searchtitle, and the title in the strcture that you expect it to match, right after you read it in and see what it says. If it is never matching then there must be some difference between them, and printing them both out and looking is probably the best way to find out what ^_^

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