Thread: Easy Problem?: How to open/read a datafile

Hi, I have this program - im pretty sure its coded correctly, and i have a datafile - basically its just a few lines of numbers. Anyways im not sure about the procedure on how to open/read datafiles with the example below.

Basically my program is about a mayors race with 4 candidates. I allready programed everything to count all the votes, percentage of votes, if a candidate has 50% of the vote he wins and it declares he/she the winner, if nobody gets 50% then it declares a runoff. Anyways im just having a problem opening and reading the datafile with all the vote figures. All the work i put into the code is useless if i cant read the datafile inputs!

For example: datafile.txt (4 candidates = 4 columns of votes)
192 48 206 37
147 90 312 21
186 12 121 38
114 21 408 39
267 13 382 29

I use olympus to compile and run my program.
gcc mayorrace.c (compiles the program - compiles fine)
a.out -datafile.txt (runs the compiled program also points to the datafile - basically it just sits there and does nothing - i push escape and then it outputs alot of 0's instead of the actual datafile votes)

Code:

Precinct        Candidate A     Candidate B     Candidate C     Candidate D
1               0               0               0               134396          
2               0               0               0               -12687724               
3               0               0               0               0               
4               0               0               -4260984                0               
5               0               0               224592          0               
Total           0               0               -4036392                -12553328               
Percent         0               0               24              76

What do i need to do? Thanks for your time Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

The last program i had that used a datafile i used this line:
FILE *fpr = fopen("datafile.txt", "r");
but thats not working very well this time, either that or i dont know where to put it...

Text files are always opened the same. You either open for reading or writing. It's always done the same. It's up to you how you read that data however.

Take a gander at fopen, fgets, fgetc, and fclose to get you started.

Quzah.