Reading issue, mixed text file

I am reading in a 2mb mixed file (i.e. contains CFLF and LF) and non-standard characters. Now, at the start of the program the file is redirected into stdin from the command prompt. The problem is the file is never fully read.

It gets to a certain point in the file and decides that its at the end of the file! How can I solve this issue?

Sample code (not the actual code of my program as this is an assignment). Note that in the assignment specs it explicitly states that this is a text file that we are reading.

running from command prompt:

prog < file > output

Code:

---

#define READ_LINE_SIZE 1024
...
char *buf = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char) * READ_LINE_SIZE);
while (!feof(stdin))
{   
  fgets(buf, READ_LINE_SIZE, stdin);
  printf("%s", buf);
}
free(buf);

---

Stop using the standard input stream for starters. It's probably getting one of those nice little "non standard characters", which it happens to consider the equivalent value of CTRL Z or CTRL D (depending on OS/shell), and stops reading. Also, don't use feof to control loops. Read the FAQ section if you want to know why.


Quzah.

I'm using stdin because its a requirement of the assignment. I started using the return value from fgets itself but it always stops at the same spot.

Can you recommend an alternative to fgets? I also tried using fread but it also doesn't read the whole file.

Code:

---

int c;
size_t x = 0;
while( (c = fgetc( myfile )) != EOF )
{
    x++;
    printf( "Character %d is %c, value of %d\n", x, c, c );
}
printf( "Total bytes read: %d\n", x );

---

See where it's stopping and find out why (what's really there, or if it's really reaching the end of your file). Move x to after the printf statement, if you want to start counting at zero instead of one. And actually open the file, don't pipe it in. Read it and find out what's wrong with it.


Quzah.

Its indeed reaching an EOF character, however that is not the actual end of the file. Its only about 1/2 through the file. It doesn't print out the value in the loop, so I printed it out after the end of the loop.

Character 1356031 is ÿ, value of -1

So you know using fseek I verified that the file size is indeed a lot larger then the amount of data read in.

Code:

---

fseek(myFile, 0, SEEK_END);
printf("File Size: %d\n", ftell(myFile));

---

This gives me a size of 2107007. There is 750977 bytes that aren't getting read.

Thanks for your help so far.

EDIT, not suprisingly, when I open the file using binary mode it reads the whole file without problems.

Is there anyway to reopen the standard stream to read binary?

You could try freopen, but you need to pretty much do that before you try to do any other IO.


Quzah.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quzah

You could try freopen, but you need to pretty much do that before you try to do any other IO.


Quzah.

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Yeah I figured as much while researching it. Anyway, thanks for your help.