Thread: Reading Hex Values to Strings from File

Hey, I'm trying to write a program that teaches you basic Danish vocabulary. Anyway, I originally had an array of structs with const chars for the dan word and eng word like so...

Code:

struct ord{
char* dan;
char* eng;
}ords[ORDNUMMER];//ORDNUMMER defined earlier
//some other stuff...
ords[4].dan="some danish word";
ords[4].eng="some english word";
//and so on

So, then I came up with this crazy idea... I want to read the values I'm assigning to each const string from a file of hex nummers. Here's the file, called testfire.dat:

61 6c 6d 69 6e 64 65 6c 69 67 65 64 00000000 //Almindeliged
6f 72 64 69 6e 61 72 79 2c 20 6e 6f 72 6d 61 6c 00000000 //Ordinary, normal
61 72 62 65 6a 64 65 00000000 //arbejde
77 6f 72 6b 00000000 //work
62 65 73 c3 b8 67 65 00000000 //besøge

I put C style comments in there so you can see what the values mean. They're not actually in the file. (Also, the 00000000 signifies the end of a word, as you'll see later)

Please note I'm assuming UTF-8 encoding. The problem I'm having is with the last line, the ø character, hex c3 b8. I get a segmentation fault when I run it in the command line. It's interesting, because when I run it in gdb, I don't get a seg fault, but it skips over the last e in besøge:

Running a.out

Code:

webmaster@sWAN:~/Hent/Tests$ ./a.out
almindeliged
ordinary, normal
arbejde
work
Segmentation fault
webmaster@sWAN:~/Hent/Tests$

Running GDB

Code:

(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/webmaster/Downloads/Tests/a.out
almindeliged
ordinary, normal
arbejde
work
besøg


Program exited normally.
(gdb)

Oh! Almost forgot the source...

Code:

for(k=0;k!=6;k++){
        do{
                fscanf(mFile, "%x", &ords[i].dan[i]);
                j=ords[i].dan[i];
                printf("%c",ords[i].dan[i]);
                i++;
        }while(j!=0x00000000);
        printf("\n");
}

It may or may not have been obvious, but I honestly don't know a thing about computer memory. So... what's going on?

Originally Posted by 809AreaCode

I want to read the values I'm assigning to each const string from a file of hex nummers. Here's the file, called testfire.dat:

61 6c 6d 69 6e 64 65 6c 69 67 65 64 00000000 //Almindeliged

So do you have a text file with the two text bytes of 6 and 1 to represent the first character, or is this just how it appears in your mind, and if you open it up in a text editor it's actually an 'A'?

Originally Posted by 809AreaCode

Code:

fscanf(mFile, "%x", &ords[i].dan[i]);

...It may or may not have been obvious, but I honestly don't know a thing about computer memory. So... what's going on?

Did you actually allocate space for ords[ i ].dan? Or are you using your pointer uninitialized here?


Quzah.

Code:

ords[i].dan[i]

Does not match the structure definition you gave us:

Code:

struct ord{
char* dan;
char* eng;
}ords[ORDNUMMER];

That is unless you allocated memory for those pointers somewhere that you didn't show us. Which would help figuring out the problem. Additionally, avoid magic numbers as much as possible.

Actually, I forgot to mention... struct ord was rewritten:

Code:

struct ord{
char dan[512];
}ords[ORDNUMMER]; //no eng words here for simplicity

This brings me back to my first question. Why are you storing them as hex instead of text? You're basically tripling the size of your file. I mean if you just want it an exercise for the sake of learning, ok, but if it's meant to be practical, it isn't. Anyway:

Code:

for(k=0;k!=6;k++){
        do{
                fscanf(mFile, "%x", &ords[i].dan[i]);
                j=ords[i].dan[i];
                printf("%c",ords[i].dan[i]);
                i++;
        }while(j!=0x00000000);
        printf("\n");
}

I don't think you want both of those indexes to be i. Shouldn't one be k? Like say:ords[ k ].dan[ i ]? You can also just compare directly:

Code:

do 
{
    ...
} while( ords[ k ].dan[ i ] != 0x00 );

As is, your assignment to j isn't going to check for four consecutive 0x00 bytes anyway.


Quzah.

And I'm sure in your fscanf you meant to type ords[k].dan[i] vice ords[i].dan[i]?

EDIT: too slow