need help with 'character counting from a .txt file'

Hi,

I am new here and I have a problem with my latest program writing-attempt.
I hope someone corrects what I have done wrong..

The question is that I was writing a message on a online text-based game and I realized that they allowed max 20000 characters to send.

Inspired from this I wanted to make program that counts the chracters (up to 25000) of whatever I wrote (or copy-pasted) in a certain .txt file.

Then I programmed this:
-----------------------------------------------------------

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>

int main ()
{
        FILE *body;
        char content[25000];
        long c = 0;
        long int s;

        /* First, I get the textbody into a flow named 'body'. */
        /* Then I get the contents into an array named 'content'. */

        body = fopen("C:\\Documents and Settings\\USER\\Desktop\\char_counter\\body.txt", "r");
        fgets(content, 25000, body);
       
        while (content[c] != EOF) /* Then I increase c every time at 1 before the EndOfFile to get the number of the characters. */
        {
        c = c + 1;
        }
        printf("number of all characters = &#37;ld\n\n", c);
       
        scanf("%lf", &s);  /* I put this here because somehow console closes itself and I can't read anything.*/
        return 0;
}

---

-----------------------------------------------------------

Then I wrote "master" in the file and expected to see '6' but I got '19748' !
I thought that windows adds something at the end of my file so that I cant take the true value. I changed the program into this and tried to manually decrease that value into expected values:
-----------------------------------------------------------

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>

int main ()
{
        FILE *body;
        char content[44742]; /* 25k + stupid */
        long stupid = 19742; /* stupid number added by windows (I think) */
        long c = 0;
        long b = 0;
        long int s;
        /* First, I get the textbody into a flow named 'body'. */
        /* Then I get the contents into an array named 'content'. */
        body = fopen("C:\\Documents and Settings\\USER\\Desktop\\char_counter\\body.txt", "r");
        fgets(content, 44742, body);
       
        while (content[c] != EOF) /* Then I increase c every time at 1 before the EndOfFile. */
        {
        c = c + 1;
        }
        c = c - stupid; /* When there are 19742 characters more than the expected value then I just decrease them to reach the expected value.. */
        printf("number of all characters = %ld\n\n", c);
       
        while (b < c) /* I am trying to see which characters are these '19742' characters.. :S */
        {
        printf("%c", content[b]);
        b = b + 1;
        }
       
        scanf("%lf", &s); /* I put this here because somehow console closes itself and I can't read anything.*/
        return 0;
}

---

-----------------------------------------------------------

The result was not better :(.

"number of all characters = 19750"
"master "
" "
" "
(It goes down like more than 250 - 300 lines.. I couldnt count :S..)




I hope I am not boring anyone with these codes and stuff please help me...
I need help to correct it. I have made lots of searches but I still keep getting lost..
I really want this thing work..

(I am using Dev-C++ on Windows XP. and notebook for .txt :))

thanks,
volkan
(master_vst)

fgets() reads from the file into a null-terminated string. The EOF is not stored. EOF is not even actually a character. It is an int so that its bit-pattern can be distinguished from all chars. The upshot of all this is that you need to check for a 0 instead of EOF.

Thank you very much!

It worked..

It is funny that it was such a stupid mistake (instead of stupid number :D)..

And I have another problem about this now..
It worked only for simple texts..

I actually wanted it for testing the forum-type texts where there are codes used..
like ([/COLOR]), ( [ u ] [ / u ]) or I use these (------------------------------------------------------------) to make head lines look better..

And when my program encounters with these it cant continue counting and just gives me the number untill these and finishes..

How can I make them countable?

I suspect you're only calling fgets() once, which means that you only read one line from the file. This is surely not what you want.

If you're trying to read a file in line by line, and process each line individually, a common idiom goes something like this:

Code:

---

FILE *fp = /* ... */;
char buffer[SIZE];
while(fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), fp)) {
    /* do something with buffer */
}

---

In your case, it would be quite simple to count the characters in each line yourself. Something like this, which could be made shorter if you know about for loops:

Code:

---

int x = 0;
while(buffer[x] != 0) {
    characters ++;
    x ++;
}

---

However, you're really just over-complicating the problem by reading in each line at a time. You could just read from the file character by character and be done with it.

Code:

---

FILE *fp = /* ... */;
int count = 0;

int c = getc(fp);
while(c != EOF) {
    count ++;
    c = getc(fp);
}

printf("There are %d characters in the file.\n", count);

---

Something like that.

(I've tried to write my code such that you should be able to understand it. Hopefully. :) )

Ohh, I didnt knew that 'fgets()' reads only one line..

I knew I made it over-complicated but I am new at programming and I was just trying to use what I already know..

Thanks for the examples..

I will try it with your version.. It looks easier.. and simple.. :)