question about reading in strings from a file :>

Hey guys..

you all helped me with a nice little programming tip earlier in the year, now i have another question :> I think you'll find it quite easy.

I am reading a file in from the hard drive. Here is what it looks like:

Code:

---

Dan Brown
The_Da_Vinci_Code
This historical fiction thriller chronicles the adventures of Robert Langdon a Harvard professor who gets caught up in the mystery involving the Priory of Sion an organization reputed of keeping a secret with regards to the very foundations of Christianity
END_BOOK_SUMMARY

---

I successfully read in Dan Brown, and then "The_Davinci_Code into my linked list

(here is the code I used)

Code:

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        fscanf(fp, "%s", temp->authorFirst);
        fscanf(fp, "%s", temp->authorLast);
     
        fgets(temp->booktitle, MAX_BOOK_LENGTH, fp);

---

Ok, here's my question:

the reason the above 3 lines of code worked, is because they stopped reading at newline. I want to read in the description of the book (starting with: The historical fiction...) in from the file word by word, stopping at whitespace. With each word, send it to my binary tree function before looking at the next word.

Whats the easiest way to do it?

I examined fscanf, this will let me read in character by character.. and research shows that it will stop reading at white space. But this brings the problem, how do I store these characters until white space is read in? I would say an array could do this, but all the words are different lengths. Its either a very tricky algorithm or theres a string function I don't know about.

LOL

Thanks for any help u can offer me :>

cheers
bball887

ps- i just looked at my post-

the way [code ] wrapped my text makes it looks like the book summary is one long line, when in fact it is on several lines.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bball887

ps- i just looked at my post-

the way [code ] wrapped my text makes it looks like the book summary is one long line, when in fact it is on several lines.

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This is why you should always use the PREVIEW button. But noone listens to me. I've got a bran as big as a planet and they got me reading all these questions... I just don't end up reading the messages cuz all i get to read is

Quote:

---

Ok, here's my question:

the reason the above 3 lines of code worked, is because they stopped reading at newline. I want to rea
word.

Whats the easiest way to do it?

I examined fscanf, this will let me read in character by character.. and research shows that it will stop
tricky algorithm or theres a string function I don't know about.

---

Oh well...

Well, unless you know of any words used in the book that exceed, say, 100 characters, it's trivial:

Code:

---

char buff[101];
...
while ( fscanf ( fp, "%100s", buff ) == 1 && strcmp ( buff, "END_BOOK_SUMMARY" ) != 0 ) {
  /* Insert a new node into the word tree */
}

---

scanf kindly adds a nul terminator to your array when it finds whitespace, so you only need to consider the upper bound for word length. Unless you're reading a dictionary of scientific terms, word lengths exceeding 100 are usually errors. ;)

prelude, thanks for the advice.. =)

I have a question regarding it. do I initialize buff inside my loop? lets suppose the first word I read in is:

Superior

If buff is initialized outside of the loop, the next word (lets say it's the) will make my array buff look like this:

theerior

Will it not send theerior as the next word to my binary tree?

Do you understand what I'm trying to ask ? =)


kind regards
bball887


PS- oh, and you were correct to assume that no word would be over 100 characters =P

>Will it not send theerior as the next word to my binary tree?
No, it won't. Remember that scanf is smart enough to tag a '\0' on the end of any new input. So after reading the 'e' in "the", the next element of the array gets assigned '\0', thus terminating the string. Only "the" will be sent to the tree:

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>

int main ( void )
{
  char *s = "the";
  char buf[20] = "Superior";

  printf ( "%s\n", buf );
  sscanf ( s, "%19s", buf ); /* simulate the stream with sscanf */
  printf ( "%s\n", buf );

  return 0;
}

---

The issue as you see it would only occur if you tried to manually read characters and forgot to close the string:

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>

int main ( void )
{
  char buf[20] = "Superior";
  int i, ch;

  printf ( "%s\n", buf );
  for ( i = 0; i < 20; i++ ) {
    ch = getchar();
    if ( isspace ( ch ) )
      break;
    buf[i] = (char)ch;
  }
  printf ( "%s\n", buf );

  return 0;
}

---

Hey man,

COP3502c @ UCF i presume? ;)

how is the program going? its murdering me


Justin

yep, you guessed it!

pretty brutal... =(

PS- Thanks prelude for the nice help :)