Get a file location in C so the program can read files from this location

Hello, I'm currently working with a program where I ask the user to input a file path, such as C:\Users\Documents\Data. I take the input from the user and store it in a character array. This file path is a folder that contains several text files that I need to read data from.

I also have file pointers created so that the program can open and read each file and store the data in an array. For instance (I believe this is correct):

Code:

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Data1Ptr = fopen( "Data1.txt", "r" );
                i = 0;
                while (!feof(Data1Ptr)) {
                    fscanf(Data1Ptr, "%d", &name);
                    Name[i] = name;
                    i++;
                }
                fclose(Data1Ptr);

---

(if this is incorrect, could y'all please let me know?)

How do I get the program to recognize that the char array with the user's input is a file location and to go to that location so that it can start opening and reading files? I'm not sure what functions there are that can do this. I read about stdin and stdout but I don't really know how to use them and I am not sure how they will help me here. I don't have very much experience with file IO's, and I've asked many people and consulted many places but I haven't found much that could help. Thank you in advance for the help!

Do not use feof like that. Better to use fgets when reading in a file.

Code:

---

while(fgets(name, sizeOfName, Data1Ptr) != NULL)
{
    // code goes here
}

---

Append the filename to the path, and pass that to "fopen".

You can also change your programs "working directory", but this requires non-portable system-specific code.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blh

(if this is incorrect, could y'all please let me know?)

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Don't use "feof" to control your loop: FAQ > Why it's bad to use feof() to control a loop - Cprogramming.com

You could also read directly into "Name[i]".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Matticus

Append the filename to the path, and pass that to "fopen".

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Could you explain how to do that? I've never done that before.

This is an assignment and the user (grader) would enter the file location (which could be anywhere on the computer) so I don't think changing the working directory helps here.

Thank you both for the feof warning, I will change that. Also thank you for letting me know I can read directly into that array.

Look into a function called "strcat".

Okay I looked it up and tried some stuff, thank you for the help!