Thread: counting words in a text file...

what is the best way to count the number of words in a text file...excluding white space, end of lines, and end of file?
The problem I'm having is that when I do my word count I always come up with more words than there are in the file.
I have attached my code followed by a sample text file.

Thanks!
Flight

attached is the source code file.

thanks dave..I looked at it tried what was suggested and still got the wrong answer...zero words counted s/b 7 words.

the code works well except it will not count the last word in the file. I noticed the last word doesn't have a line feed at the end. How can I fix this?
Thanks!
flight

Code:

include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>

int main()
{
	//local declarations
	char file_name[100] ;
    int count ;

    int update_counter = 0;

    FILE *inp1, *out1 ;

	// init some stuff
    count=0 ;

   // prompt the user
    printf("Enter Filename : ")  ;

	// read the keyboard input
    fgets(file_name, sizeof(file_name), stdin);

	//remove the newline character from the end of the input filename
	file_name[strlen(file_name) - 1] = '\0' ;

	// open input file
	inp1 = fopen(file_name, "r") ;
    if(inp1 == NULL)	
	{
	 fprintf(stderr, "can't open %s\n", file_name) ;
	 exit(EXIT_FAILURE) ;
	}

	// open output file
	out1 = fopen("output.txt", "w") ;
    if(out1 == NULL)	
	{
	 fprintf(stderr, "can't open %s\n", "output.txt") ;
	 exit(EXIT_FAILURE) ;
	}

    // count the words in the input file
    for ( ;; )
    {
       int ch = fgetc(inp1);
       if ( ch == EOF )
       {
          break;
       }
       if ( isalpha(ch) || isdigit(ch) || ispunct(ch))
       {
          update_counter = 1;

       }
       if ( isspace(ch) && update_counter )
       {
          count++;
          update_counter = 0;
       }
    }
 
	//echo the word count for the file
    printf("\nFile %s contains %d words \n\n", file_name, count) ;
 
	//write the word count to the output file
	fprintf(out1,"File %s contains %d words \n", file_name, count) ;

	// we're done...close files
	fclose(inp1) ;
	fclose(out1) ;

  return 0;

it's because the word counter is increased when a white space is found, if the file ends with a letter, the program won't find a white space and thus won't increase the counter.
To fix this, add this code after the for loop and before printing the result:

Code:

if (update_counter) {
	count++;
}

would you consider this an unelegant method? Don't get me wrong I sincerely do appreciate your reply!

yep, I had a similar idea when I posted, the elegant way IMHO is adding this piece of code before the break statement in the for loop.

Thanks again!
flight