Thread: Printing a random question from a file

  1. #1
    Registered User
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    Mar 2012
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    Printing a random question from a file

    I'm writing a program that outputs a random question from a file. In the file, I have each question numbered like this 1-5:

    1 Question
    multiple choices...

    2 Question
    multiple choices...

    etc.

    How can I use "random" so the program can jump to that number and print out only that question?

    Code:
    #include <stdio.h>
    #define DATAFILE "/home/usr/trivia"
    
    
    int main(){
       FILE *data = fopen(DATAFILE, "r");
       if(data == NULL){
          puts("File not found");
          return 0;
       }  
       srand(time(NULL));
       int random = rand() % 5 + 1;
       char text[1000];
       int i, j;
       while(fgets(text, 1000, data) != NULL){
             printf("%s", text);
       }
       puts("");
       fclose(data);
       return 0;
    }

  2. #2
    young grasshopper jwroblewski44's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2012
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    Where the sidewalk ends
    Posts
    294
    I would have the user enter the number, then take in lines from input until you've reached the specified line number. No need to keep actual numbers in the lines in the file.

    edit: my bad, generate a random number, then ....

    edit2: well it seems you're making a trivia game? So then if you're planning on outputting many questions, I would first read in all the questions into an array of char arrays ( list of lines ) then you could use the actual random number as the index to the array of char arrays.

    ie

    Code:
    char * lines[ MAXLINES ];
    printf( "%s" , lines[ random ] );
    Last edited by jwroblewski44; 02-13-2013 at 11:28 PM.

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