read in from file.

question. I'm trying to read in a line from a file in the form

January 5 1 4 5 7 14
April 7 4 55 67 54 23 8 99

the above means that the first part is a string and the first number tells how much numbers comes after it. So january has 5 numbers that comes after it and april has 7 numbers that comes after it.

My question is that being that the amount of data per line will be different, how would i go about coding something like this.

I was thinking of using fgets to get the entire line but i need to address each individual and then assign them to something inside my program?

Once you read the first number, you know how many times to loop to read the rest.

You could use fscanf() to skip over the month (well store it, but as far as reading the other information is concerned the month name is of little consequence) use strtol() to get the number of arguments, then use strtol() to get the others. Use all the parameters of strtol().

You could...

Code:

---

scanf() in a string,
scanf() in a number into a variable called "count"

loop "count" times {
    scanf() in a number ;
}

---

Why can't this be done

while(action[i]!= " ")
{
action1[i]=action[i];
i++;
}

with i incrimented each time the loop executes.


What i did was use fgets to read in entire line then im trying to break it up

Because the index of action1 needs to start over from 0 all the time -- every time you hit a space -- while i needs to keep on keepin' on to get through action. Plus then you have to convert strings into numbers.

Edit: Oh and it would need to be ' ', which is a vastly different creature from " ". But as you mentioned, sscanf will be your bestest friend, if you will let it.

Is this where sscanf comes in?

fscanf's input is a file. sscanf's is a string in your program. Both functions take same types formatting strings to define how to interpret numbers or characters from the input.

Question here concerning below. I use fgets to read in an entire line from a file in the format: " text 5 1 2 33 34 52" with the first number telling how many number follows it. However how do i go about working with the a number greater than 10.

Quote:

---

for(x=0; x<num_events; x++)
{
fgets(action,1024,open);


sscanf(action,"%s ", action1);

originallinesize=strlen(action);
wordsize=strlen(action1);

for(i=wordsize+1;i<originallinesize;i++)
{
if( isdigit(action[i])>1)
{
printf("%c\n", action[i]);
}

else
{
// when it finds the space seperating the numbers it prints below.
printf("no sir\n");
}

---

I believe this

Code:

---

if( isdigit(action[i])>1)

---

is not what you want. (I would not expect isdigit to ever return something bigger than 1, although it is theoretically possible.) You probably just want isdigit by itself.

Anyway, if you feel the need to not use

Code:

---

sscanf(action+wordsize, "%d", &first_number);

---

but want to read in character by character, you can do so: as you read in a digit, multiply what you have by 10 and add in the value of the new digit.

And excitingly, you can use %n to find out how many characters were read by sscanf, so that you can work out the new position (as in my example above).