Help with a character counting program!

Hi all, i've been working on this problem all morning (i'm a complete newb to C and only did it as part of my engineering course)

The question reads :
"Write a complete program to count the number of characters in a text file. The program should open a pre-existant text file (checking if the open operation was succesful), count the number of characters in the file (use a variable called numChars) and close the file afterwards.

Heres my attempt thus far

Code:

---


#include <stdio.h>

int main () {
   

int numChars;

FILE *Textfile;

Textfile = fopen("C://list.txt", "r");

if (Textfile == NULL)

{
            printf ("File failed to open.\n");

} else {
   

while ( (Textfile = getchar() ) != EOF )

{
      numChars++;
 
}

}
fclose(Textfile);

printf("The %d of characters in the text file is:", numChars);

return 0 ;

}

---

It seems to be mostly fine but problems are arrising in the while loop section, i think its due to the fact im using the pointer Textfile but am not entirely sure there could be a lot more problems knowing me. I also think i have to declare or include the txt file would i be right in thinking that ? Thanks in advance.

James

You just need a single foreward slash in your file name. You're thinking of backslash, which must be escaped.
getchar reads from standard in (stdin), not from a file. Try fgetc, and just compare what it returns directly with EOF.


Quzah.

Thanks for the advice, i'm not overly familier with fgetc, it seems to be similar to getchar except that it reads the next character from a file as opposed to from stdin.

So would i be correct in assuming it is implemented in the same way as getchar?

eg .

Code:

---




while ( (Textfile = fgetc() ) == EOF )
{
      numChars++;
 }

---

I'm extremly in expierienced in using any of these features so you'll have to excuse my ignorance towards them!

'Textfile' is your file. So you wouldn't assign what fgetc reads to that. You'd be just checking what was returned to see if it was EOF or not. Something like:

Code:

---

while( fgetc( Textfile ) != EOF )
    numChars++;

---

Quzah.

Check the Usage of fgetc
int fgetc( FILE *stream );

You may wanted something like below

Code:

---

while ( ( something = fgetc(Textfile)...... ))

---

Thanks a lot! The program appears to be working now, well i'm getting the "File failed to open message" due to the fact that the file doesnt actually exist on my pc. Thanks for your help!

Since you probably do not need the file length (which can be obtained with other methods), but the count of alphabetic characters, then I think your loop should look like this:

Code:

---

int c;

while( (c = fgetc(Textfile) != EOF)
{
        if(isalpha(c)) ++numChars;
}

---

I hope this helps.

Hi, i think the question is asking for the count of every character, spaces etc. included. Does your way count spaces too ? Also what does "isalpha" mean i am not familier with it! Thanks for your advice though!

The isalpha(c) function checks if c is an alphabetic character like 'a', 'b', etc. The previous program counts such letters only, excluding spaces or digits. If you need the number of all of bytes, then use

Code:

---

while(fgetc(Textfile) != EOF) ++numChars;

---

but it does not seem to be the quicker way in my opinion.

Um, Viorel... where on earth did you get the "alphabetics only" idea? :)

There *are* faster ways to obtain file size, using stat() and similiar functions, but I'm guessing using those functions won't help our little friend pass his course!