Thread: Trouble Interpreting Column Headers

In this problem, they have supplied a data sheet ( which is supposedly tab delimited, but not my copy ). In the problem, posted below, they state, "The first row of the file contains the column headings. There are eight selfexplanatory fields." Now I may be dimmer than the students they are used to dealing with, but the titles are somewhat helpful to me, nothing more. Can someone help me interpret the titles meanings'? My goal is determine how many people emigrated from Massachusetts to all the other states. The data sheet is attached. Thanks pals for any and all pointers!

Problem:

In this problem, we will be reading in formatted data and generating a report. One of the
common formats for interchange of formatted data is ’tab delimited’ where each line corresponds
to a single record. The individual fields of the record are separated by tabs. For this problem,
download the file stateoutflow0708.txt from Stellar. This contains the emigration of people
from individual states. The first row of the file contains the column headings. There are eight self
explanatory fields. Your task is to read the file using fscanf and generate a report outlining the
migration of people from Massachusetts to all the other states. Use the field ”Aggr AGI” to report
the numbers. Also, at the end, display a total and verify it is consistent with the one shown below.
An example report should look like the following:

STATE TOTAL
"FLORIDA" 590800
"NEW HAMPSHIRE" 421986
..........
Total 4609483
Make sure that the fields are aligned.

edit: in the actual problem, the output is aligned properly.

stateoutflow0708.txt

It's a good thing I didn't close it, even if I could. I have another question: will you helpful souls check out my format string and data struct. It's my first time using either of these concepts in C and I'm having trouble understanding the formatting for fscanf. I was attempting to use this sample c - How to read specifically formatted data from a file? - Stack Overflow program to help form my formatting inside fscanf, but I'm reading out garbage. I was hoping ultimately someone could help me understand how to pull the different data types out of the stream, especially when quotes are surrounding the information.

Here is my program so far. I'm just testing out my fscanf function at the time being (note: there are some artifacts floating around from me messing around, don't worry if I have unused variables.):

Code:

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

#define MAXRECORDS    5000

int main()
{
    const char * readfile   = "stateoutflow.txt";
    const char * writefile  = "stateoutflow-report.txt";
    const char * read_mode    = "r";
    const char * write_mode = "w";


    FILE * datafile , * writeout;


    if( ( datafile = fopen( readfile , read_mode ) ) == NULL )
    {
        printf( "unable to open file \"%s\" with mode \"%s\"...quitting\n" , readfile , read_mode );
        return( 1 );
    }


    writeout = fopen( writefile , write_mode );


    OutflowRecord mainstorage;


    char charbuf[ 50 ];
    unsigned int n = 0;


    /* this while loop discards the first line of headers */
    while( ( fscanf( datafile , "%s" , charbuf ) == 1 ) && ( n++ < 9 ) )
        ;


    fscanf( datafile ,
            "\"%u\" "    // store:state code origin number
            "\"%*d\" "    // discard:county code origin number
            "\"%*d\" "    // discard:state code dest number
            "\"%*d\" "    // discard:county code dest number
            "\"*2c\" "    // discard:state abbreviation
            "\"%[^\"]\" "    // store:state name
            "%*d "        // discard:return number
            "%u "        // store:exemption number
            "%*d " ,    // discard:aggr_agi
            &mainstorage.st_origin_code , mainstorage.dest_state_name , &mainstorage.exmpt_num );
    printf( "State Code of Origin: %u\nName of Destination State: %s\nNumber of Exemptions: %u\n" , mainstorage.st_origin_code , mainstorage.dest_state_name , mainstorage.exmpt_num );
    fclose( datafile );


    return 0;
}

And record.h:

Code:

#define    MAXLEN    23


typedef struct StateOutwardFlowRecords
{
    unsigned int st_origin_code;
    char         dest_state_name[ MAXLEN ];
    unsigned int exmpt_num;
} OutflowRecord;

The file being used for reading is attached to the original post.
Another bit of information; when I run the program, I get different results each time for the "State origin code".