Unexpected Results

[Bailz]

Hello everyone.

I'm trying to write a method that will read text from a file, change any punctuation or numbers to spaces and also preserve the existing spaces between words. I've got this far:

char * getText()
{
 FILE * src = fopen("concl.txt","r");
 char * str = malloc(5001);
 char next,last=(char)"";
 int check,i=0;
 
 while((next=fgetc(src)) != EOF)
 {
  check = next;
  if(isalpha(check))
    str[i] = next;
  else {
    if(!isspace(last))
      str[i] = ' ';
  }
  i++;
  last = next;
 }
 return str;
}

I'm also checking that if the previous character was a space it's not going to add extra space if, for example, it finds " !". However, as soon as it encounters a double space it stops adding anything to the array and, obviously, gives an incomplete output. Can someone set me on the right track?

[jafet]

If I get you correctly, you want to preserve words, and replace strings containing everything else with a single space. (Including multiple spaces between two words.) This is rather easy to do.

while(condition)
1. If encounter(word), read whole word into string
2. If !encounter(word), read and discard until you encounter a word. Add a space as a seperator, and continue.

Also, you don't need check, just pass next to isalpha(). next should be declared as int to ensure EOF checking is portable. last is assigned the garbage value of a trancated string literal pointer upon startup.

[Bailz]

Thanks for the reply!

What I'm trying to avoid is multiple spaces between words.

If we were to take in:

This is a2test to see if# this program works.

If would output:

This a test to see if this program works

Numbers and punctation converted to spaces and no two spaces beside each other.

[quzah]

FILE *in, *out;
int c, last = 0;
... open both ...
while( (c = fgetc( in ) != EOF )
    if( last != ' ' )
        fputc( c, fp );
    last = c;
}

Close them both. Delete the input file. Rename the output file.


Quzah.

[Bailz]

FILE *in, *out;
int c, last = 0;
... open both ...
while( (c = fgetc( in ) != EOF )
    if( last != ' ' )
        fputc( c, fp );
    last = c;
}

Close them both. Delete the input file. Rename the output file.


Quzah.

...while also removing the numbers and punctuation. I pretty much have that just now but it's still not doing what I want.

[quzah]

Well I'm not going to write the whole thing for you.


Quzah.