Thread: In need of help. Please.

Ok I have written so code that is in a text format from a file. It is supposed to separate the words and then eliminate "the", "and", "an", "for", "a", and "of".

I'm trying to KISS. But I'm hung up on allocating the string of characters to memory. I can get the string of charcters to print in but am have troubles getting it to run past my calloc memory allocation. Can you please help. I am not sure where I'm going wrong. This is my code.

Code:

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

#define FLUSH while (getchar() != '\n')

int main (void) 
{
//	Local Declarations
	char   strng[1000];
	char** pWords;         // array of pointers to char
	FILE* spIn;

    int size = 100;
	int wordIndex;

//	Statements
	printf("Data to Manipulate: \n\n");
	if (!(spIn = fopen ("c:\\sample.txt", "r")))
	 {
		printf("\aError could not open.\n");
	    system("Pause");
		exit (100);
	 }//if
	while (fgets (strng, sizeof (strng), spIn))
	 {
	    printf("%s", strng);
	 }
	printf("\n\n");

    // Allocate array in heap.
	// One extra element added for loop control 
	pWords = (char*)calloc (size + 1, sizeof *(char*));
	
		
	wordIndex = 0;
	while (wordIndex < size 
	    && fgets(strng, sizeof(strng), spIn))
	    {
	     *(pWords + wordIndex)  = (char*) 
	          calloc (strlen(strng) + 1, sizeof(char));
	     strcpy (*(pWords + wordIndex), strng);
	     wordIndex++;
	   } // while
	
	*(pWords + wordIndex) = NULL;
	printf("\nList of words are: \n");
	wordIndex = 0;
	while (*(pWords + wordIndex))
	   {
	    printf("%3d: %s", 
	            wordIndex, *(pWords + wordIndex));
	    wordIndex++;
	   } // while
	system("Pause");
	return 0;
}	// main

And here is the File used for in.
****
Creating a national seal was a more difficult task then our founding fathers
believed it would be. The idea was to create a national seal that would
illustrate the principles and ideals of our new nation. The challenge was
agreeing upon the symbols that would best represent the thirteen states as a
whole, the government including Congress, the Senate, and the Commander and
Chief while representing the ideals and principles fought for and resulted in
blood shed. The process of designing the seal was one of heated debate and
disagreement. The design of the seal ended up being a six-year project
resulting in several proposed designs from three separate committees.
****
Thank you in advance. I can'yt move on until I figure this out and I'm at my wits end. PLease Please help.

Thank you!

Shouldn't this:

Code:

pWords = (char*)calloc (size + 1, sizeof *(char*));

be this:

Code:

pWords = calloc (size, sizeof (char*));

You want pWords to have enough room for 100 pointers-to-char (you don't need to null-terminate an array! you've got a counter that tells you how many words you have), and then you can allocate memory later to pWords[0], pWords[1], etc. (which is going to be easier to write and read than your pointer arithmetic version) once you know what each word is.
And didn't your compiler complain about that char* that you cast calloc to being assigned to a char**?

My compile kept saying I needed to add a ). While I kept trying to adjust the code on the line I kept getting a variety of reads but could not determine the problem. I will try this. Do I need to eliminate the NULL reference altogether?

I copy and pasted your recommended code to my program. Ran the debug and this is what I get again. This is the same error message I've gotten regardless of what I have tried.

Code:

                // Allocate array in heap.
	// One extra element added for loop control 
	pWords = calloc (size, sizeof (char*));

Error message again same line of code. What am I doing wrong?

c:\documents and settings\administrator.home-inceydwazx\my documents\visual studio 2005\projects\chapter11\chapter11\test.cpp(37) : error C2440: '=' : cannot convert from 'void *' to 'char **'
Conversion from 'void*' to pointer to non-'void' requires an explicit cast
Generating Code...

I was trying to make this into function and call upon them but, I'm not sure I'm understanding how could Use some help please.

Thank you.

ok. I've casted the type so that calloc to take care of the type casting of void to char. However then I get the error can't convert from char to char** I have tried dereferencing the char and other coding scenerios but I'm getting a big zip.

Please help.

I am sorry what do you mean by rewind the file pointer. And where would I do this? I appreciate you help but I'm lost. Could you explain more.

Thank you.

You open the file at the beginning to read and print each line in the text file. Once you've done this, the file pointer, spIn, is at the end of the file. This causes the first fgets, when you're starting to read your data into the pWords array, to fail and the array does not get populated at all.

By putting the fseek call before you reset your wordIndex counter to 0, the array population will work as you expect.

Your advice worked and I see what you mean. Thank you. Now I'm trying to get the program to print individual non repeat of the words. It's printing full sentences. Can you help. Could you advise me to the method I should approach.

Thank you I do appreciate your help.

You should probably be looking at strstr to find the words.

Would I use a str to str comparison for that? I think I'm running into a problem. Could you help.