error: expected identifier or â(â before âwhileâ

I have used this bit of code before without problems, however, when using it now, i'm getting the error listed in the title...

I don't see anything wrong with it.. any help?

Code:

---

        //Prompting user for Input file//
        while(resp == 'Y' || resp == 'y'){
                printf("Please enter the file you'd like to read from: ");
                scanf("%s", fileInName);
                if((fopen(fileInName, "r")) == NULL){
                        printf("Could not open requested file. Would you like to enter another file? [Y/N]: ");
                        scanf("%*c %c", &resp);
                }
                else {
                        inFile = fopen(fileInName, "r");
                        break;
                }
                if(resp == 'n' || resp == 'N')
                        exit(1);

        }

---

so what do you have before while?
and why are you calling fopen twice to open same file?

That code looks fine to me. What comes before it? Perhaps a missing ; or unmatched parens or curly braces.

I don't immediately see any problem, but I'm willing to bet the error is actually somewhere above this snippet of code.

Since the error message says something about "before while", I'm guessing we need to see a bit more code leading up to this point.

This is everything that exists above that bit of code

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define MaxSize 30
int main(){

        FILE *inFile;
        FILE *outFile;

        char resp = 'Y';
        char fileInName[20];
        char fileOutName[20];

        int k;
        int numRecords;

        //Define struct//
        struct employee {
                char surname[10];
                char given[10];
                char dept[20];
                float payRate;
                char eyeColor[8];
        }

---

Yeah, your struct needs a trailing ;

Just caught it, its my first time using structs and i didn't realize i needed a semi-colon after the struct definition. sorry for the trouble folks. :-/

thanks for the help :)

Code:

---

struct employee {
                char surname[10];
                char given[10];
                char dept[20];
                float payRate;
                char eyeColor[8];
        }  ;

---

and defining struct in main means the definition of this struct is local to main function only.
Most of the time, I can assure you don't want it.