Thread: delimiter-terminated getline?

i have two problems actually:

1) in c++, you can use the 'getline' function to read in a line that is terminated with a specified delimiter..is this at all possible in c? I am assuming that i'd have to create a loop and use getc (this is all reading input in from a file).

2) this line of code does not seem to compile...
sarray[index]=(struct student*)malloc(sizeof(struct student));

student is a struct, sarray is an array of students and index is initialed to 0 at this point...any input as to what i am doing wrong? the error is saying that is an assignment mismatch.

doomo

Use fgetc to implement your getline function. You can then easily implement the delimiter feature.

sarray is an array of students while your malloc function is returning a pointer to students. That's why you're getting a mismatch. Perhaps you should create an array of pointers.

thanks for the fgetc, but i was looking for something that did the work for me (of course, i am extremely lazy)...but i will be forced to deal with my own coding inadequacies....

as for the malloc function...i think i see my error....let's try it out though...

doomo.

another fgets question, this line of code chokes when i use it:

>fgets(sarray[index].name, 25, fname);

at this point: index=0, sarray is a name of students, name is a character array in the student structure and fname is a pointer to a file name...the error states that argument 3 (fname) is incompatible with prototype...why???

doomo again.

i figured it out...i needed to use a FILE pointer for the third argument of fgets...jeez, i was stuck on that for the longest time....ugh.....


doomo

Here's a quick implementation of getline:

Code:

char* GetLine(char *buffer, int size, char delimiter, FILE *stream)
{
   int i, c;

   for(i = 0; i < size - 1; i++)
   {
      c = fgetc(stream);
      if( (c == EOF) || ((char)c == delimiter) )
      {
         if(ferror(stream))
            return NULL;
         break;
      }
      buffer[i] = (char)c;
   }
   buffer[i] = '\0';

   return buffer;
}

If you don't care if you overflow your buffer potentially, you could always use fscanf with the "%[]" operator to specify your delimits, since you're lazy.

Quzah.

I had a quick question. Say if you used fgets and passed in size 5. Would it use all 5 slots to store the characters or would that fifth slot store the null character?

Originally posted by Cshot
I had a quick question. Say if you used fgets and passed in size 5. Would it use all 5 slots to store the characters or would that fifth slot store the null character?

To quote fgets:

"fgets() reads in at most one less than size characters
from stream and stores them into the buffer pointed to by
s. Reading stops after an EOF or a newline. If a newline
is read, it is stored into the buffer. A '\0' is stored
after the last character in the buffer."

Quzah.