Reading and Writing from files

[dutch's finest]

Hi there,

I'm a university student studying C, I was wondering if you all could help me.

I am writing a database, just a simple practise one, taking in name, telephone, address. I have defined a structure for it all, but my questions are:

1. Can a read a .txt file with my program and display it,my desire is that when the program is exited the values the user has inputed previous are stored in a .txt and when they re-run the program they can access already stored values.

2. Also are there any specific syntax when working with structures and writting to a .txt file.

If you have any querries just ask and i'll reply, sorry for lack of code but only starting to design the program and weeding out all potential problems.

Cheers

Dutch's Finest

[ober]

I can't really help you much with the coding, but there are several formats you could use.

1) XML format, which would aid in the searching/display of your records.

2) Delimited text file (eg. comma). This would be easy to parse.

[Prelude]

>1. Can a read a .txt file with my program and display it
Yes. It isn't terribly difficult either.

>2. Also are there any specific syntax when working with structures and writting to a .txt file.
Well, everything has a specific syntax. Take a look at our FAQ (this one in particular) for details.

[WaltP]

Originally posted by dutch's finest
Hi there,

I'm a university student studying C, I was wondering if you all could help me.

I am writing a database, just a simple practise one, taking in name, telephone, address. I have defined a structure for it all...

Look at the fread and fwrite functions. If you open the file in binary mode, you can initially write out yout structure directly to the file as you exit. As the program starts, simply read the file into your structure and voila!

[Dave_Sinkula]

>Look at the fread and fwrite functions.

Arguments against this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...3.giganews.com

[liams7]

ok if you open a file to a file pointer declaring as

FILE *file

while(i < 10)
{
     a = fgetc(file);
     i++;
}

then you can step through the file using code such as


or you can as some one said use fwrite and fread but this doesnt let you look at files individually unless you use malloc but this is just difficult and hard to be honest.

[WaltP]

Originally posted by Dave_Sinkula
>Look at the fread and fwrite functions.

Arguments against this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...3.giganews.com

Arguments for this:

Originally posted by dutch's finest
1) I'm a university student studying C...

2) I am writing a database, just a simple practise one...

3) It gives good practice on using fread() and fwrite()

[WaltP]

Originally posted by liams7
or you can as some one said use fwrite and fread but this doesnt let you look at files individually unless you use malloc but this is just difficult and hard to be honest.

Looks like someone else is new to programming.
What makes you think you can't look at files individually? I do this all the time and never use malloc for it?
Where did you get this idea?

[dutch's finest]

Hey all, thanks for everything really appreciate what you all have said wrote the database and works perfectly

Thanks again