Taking input from text file..

Hi guys,

Ultra nooby question here. Just doing an assignment, and I've got my array setup working and printing out as it should, but I'm using scanf to take input.. and the input file we're given starts with string column headers (which we don't need to store).

scanf goes EOF when it reads these characters first, and hence I'll just get a bunch of garbage when it prints with whatever's in memory. What should I be using to take the number inputs to integers, while ignoring the text at the top? I can't for the life of me remember how this is done. This is what I have storing the input:

Code:

---

    for (i=0; i < ROWS; i=i+1) {

        scanf("%d", &month[i]);
        scanf("%d", &year[i]);
        scanf("%d", &postcode[i]);
        scanf("%d", &bedrooms[i]);
        scanf("%d", &price[i]);

        }

---

And this is the input file:

Code:

---

Month Year Postcode Bedrooms  Price
  12  2008  2033    3      783000
  7  2009  2034    4      777000
  12  2008  2034    4      821000
  3  2008  2034    3      781500
  2  2009  2034    4      847000
  11  2008  2032    3      729000
  7  2008  2034    4      768500
  12  2009  2034    4      868000
  4  2009  2033    5      746000
  2  2008  2034    2      831500

---

I hope my question makes sense!

Read and ignore the first line. Have a single fgets to read the first line, don't store/parse the data. Then continue on as normal with your loop.

Wow, fast reply! Thanks, using fgets ignores the line like I want.

One other small query - how do I avoid storing it like you suggest? I get a compile error for lack of arguments when I try not specifying a character array. I've got this at the moment:

Code:

---

char dummystr[50];
   

fgets(dummystr, 50, stdin);

---

Well, you will have to store it somewhere with fgets but you do it into a scratch/dummy variable that you will either overwrite soon after or one that you don't do any further processing to/with. You can ignore the first line with scanf however, not even needing such a scratch/dummy variable to store something you'd never even use:

Code:

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scanf("%*[^\n]");

---

Code:

---

scanf("%*[^\n]");

---

Wow good use of scanf()! :D