Thread: Read in .dat file unknown number of rows

Ok so i have a couple of .dat files i want to read into my program to then go on and do multiple calculations too..

The .dat files have different number of rows each and are just numbers
They have 2 columns separated by a space.

What i want to do is to read them into C into dynamic allocated arrays the left column going to an array called 'x' and the right column going to an array called 'y'

How can i find out the number of rows so i can then malloc the arrays or is there some sort of loop i can create??
Also i've heard its bad to use EOF??

any help would be much apprecitated
Cheers

Welcome to the forum, Chris. Unfortunately, we don't do what you've asked for.

The way it works here, is you give it a shot, and then you post up what you've done, and ask away about whatever has you stumped, and we'll try and get you past that problem/s.

It's VERY rare that we'll start a persons assignment, for them, with no effort being shown on their part.

Code:

while(!feof) {
      //other code here
}

is a poor construct, because the detection for EOF comes later than you'd expect, resulting in the last value frequently going thru the loop, one time too many.

But there's nothing wrong with using EOF in a while loop - remembering that EOF is represented by an integer, and not a char (etc.) data type.

You can also use the return from fscanf() ( return is the number of objects scanned and stored ). If the return is less than two, then you should exit the loop immediately. This return is also an integer.

How can i find out the number of rows so i can then malloc the arrays or is there some sort of loop i can create??

Time for the magic of logic.

Let's say you had a box of marbles, and you wanted to give one marble to each kid in the neighborhood, which requires a bag for each kid/marble. But you're kind of low on cash (and have no bags) so you only want to buy the number of bags you need. How would you determine how may bags you need to buy to do this?