Thread: Grouping two related lines together from a file...help!

Hi, if I have a file that looks like this

--------------------

8
ihave
22
a
0
aheadache

---------------------
where the first line is an integer less than 100, and the next line are some letters less than 1000.
The first two lines (8 and ihave, for example) go together (8 is like the number of times the word ihave appears). Is there a way I can store these two together and then read the next two and store them together and then the next and so on?

Use one fgets() call to read the first line into a buffer. Use another fgets() call to read the next line into another buffer. Then do whatever you need to with those two buffers.

Repeat until end of file.

Code:

char b1[BUFSIZ], b2[BUFSIZ];
while ( fgets( b1, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
  if ( fgets( b2, BUFSIZ, fp ) != NULL ) {
    // do stuff with b1 and b2
  }
}

Okok, I used that method...
with this file
------------------------
32
abcdefg
22
hijklm
45
nopqr

------------------------

this code:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#define MAX 100
#define SOURCE2 "pattern2.txt"

int main(void)
{
	
	char b1[MAX]; 
	char b2[MAX];
	FILE *fp = fopen(SOURCE2, "r");

	while ( fgets( b1, MAX, fp ) != NULL ) {
  	if ( fgets( b2, MAX, fp ) != NULL ) {
    	printf("%s", b1);
	printf("%s", b2);
  	}
	}

	printf("\nb1[0] = %c", b1[0]);
	printf("\nb2[0] = %c", b2[0]);

	fclose(fp);

	return 0;
	
}

and got this output:

------------------------------
32
abcdefg
22
hijklm
45
nopqr

b1[0] =

b2[0] = n
------------------------------

It works inside the 'if' function but i dont really want to anything within the if function (if thats possible). I want the numbers 32 or 22 or 45 to stay as numbers so i can do comparisons and formulas with them much later on. And I want 32 to be associated with abcdefg.

It says its my main() function, but i actually want to make it into a function that can be called by my main function, so that it can return a number (32) and an array of characters (abcdefg). And then get another pair and return it and then another pair...up a around 50 -100 pairs(i just know its alot of pairs).

Sorry, your method may work for what im trying to do but im a supernewb at this stuff, so any explanations and further help would be good, thanks!

You need to remove the newline from the end of b1
http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/...&id=1043284385

Then you should be able to print
printf( "%s %s", b1, b2 );