writing what a program has read

I have been able to read what are the contents of a file and display them on the screen, it worked well

Then i tried to write a new file (file1.dat) that contains the odd lines of the first file. But there is nothing that appears on file1.dat.

Code:

---

  FILE * fp, * outptr;
  char lines [ 90 ];

  if ( ( fp = fopen ( FILENAME, "r" ) ) == NULL ) {
    fprintf ( stderr, "fileloop1: Unable to open %s!\n", FILENAME );
    exit ( 1 );
    }

  fgets (lines, 90, fp);

  while ( ! feof ( fp ) )
  {
    fputs ( lines, stdout );
    fgets ( lines, 90, fp ); //displaying the contents of a file
  }

    if(feof(fp))
    {
        fgets(lines, 90, fp);
        outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
        fprintf(outptr, "%s\n", lines); // trying to write the line of the first file in the second one
      }

---

please help

Code:

---

    if(feof(fp))
    {
        fgets(lines, 90, fp);

---

What do you expect this to do?

If there is anything at all in lines, it's probably whatever was read last time fgets() was successful.

See the FAQ about using feof() to control a loop.

thanks for your reply

well, I changed the code a bit

Code:

---

  while ( ! feof ( fp ) ) {
    outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
    fputs ( buffer, stdout );
    fgets ( buffer, 81, fp );
    fprintf(outptr, "%s\n", buffer);
    }

---

now, "file1.dat" shows some output, but it's the last line of the file and it misses the first 2 letters... what's happening ?

You still haven't read the FAQ regarding feof()!

Listen to what Salem has said, for a start. You output 'buffer' before you even load anything into it...

while ( fgets( buff, sizeof buff, fp ) != NULL ) fputs( buff, stdout );

Is all you need to copy a text file to your terminal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Salem

while ( fgets( buff, sizeof buff, fp ) != NULL ) fputs( buff, stdout );

Is all you need to copy a text file to your terminal.

---

thanks but it's not what I all need.

copying a file to a terminal, i've already been able to do it.

but how about writing a new file that writes what the program has read ?

Code:

---

while ( fgets( buffer, sizeof buffer, fp ) != NULL ) fputs( buffer, stdout );  {
    outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
    fprintf(outptr, "%s", buffer);
    }

---

Why the file file1.dat is empty after every run of the program. Where did I mistake ?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hinman

Code:

---

while ( fgets( buffer, sizeof buffer, fp ) != NULL ) fputs( buffer, stdout );  {
    outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
    fprintf(outptr, "%s", buffer);
    }

---

Why the file file1.dat is empty after every run of the program. Where did I mistake ?

---

Poor indentation strikes again.

Where did you see any problem with the identation of these 4 lines of code ??

Code:

---

while ( fgets( buffer, sizeof buffer, fp ) != NULL ) fputs( buffer, stdout );  {
    outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
    fprintf(outptr, "%s", buffer);
    }

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hinman

Where did you see any problem with the identation of these 4 lines of code ??

Code:

---

while ( fgets( buffer, sizeof buffer, fp ) != NULL ) fputs( buffer, stdout );  {
    outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
    fprintf(outptr, "%s", buffer);
    }

---

---

Where's the loop body? And even if your loop body was correct, why continually reopen and truncate the file?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dave_Sinkula

Where's the loop body? And even if your loop body was correct, why continually reopen and truncate the file?

---

No it's not what i am trying to do, there are 2 files, the first one is file.dat the second is file1.dat

File.dat has a list of 10 lines.

When I do this:

Code:

---

while ( fgets( buffer, sizeof buffer, fp ) != NULL ) {
    fputs( buffer, stdout );
    outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");  // opening and creating  a new file
    fprintf(outptr, "%s", buffer);  // write in it lines of the first file
    }

---

its output is the last line of the output, and it misses the first 2 letters, I don't know what to change in order to fix that.

Code:

---


  FILE * fp, * outptr, * outptr2;
  char buffer [ 81 ];
  int i;
  outptr = fopen ("file1.dat","w");
  outptr2 = fopen ("file2.dat","w");
 
  if ( ( fp = fopen ( FILENAME, "r" ) ) == NULL ) {
    fprintf ( stderr, "fileloop1: Unable to open %s!\n", FILENAME );
    exit ( 1 );
    }
 
  if ( ( outptr = fopen ("east.dat","w") ) == NULL ) {
    fputs("Unable to open east.dat",stderr);
    fclose(outptr) ;
}
 
    while ( fgets( buffer, sizeof buffer, fp ) != NULL ) {
      fputs( buffer, stdout );
    }
 
    for(i=1; i<=10; i=i+2)
    {         
          fgets(buffer, 81, fp);
          fprintf(outptr, "%d: %s", i, buffer);
    } 
 
    for(i=0; i<=10; i=i+2)
    {         
          fgets(buffer, 81, fp);
          fprintf(outptr2, "%d: %s", i, buffer);
    } 
  fclose(fp);
  fclose(outptr);
  flclose(outptr2);

---

The output of both file1.dat and file2.dat are empty, except the line numbers. Why doesn'it prints the lines ?

> but how about writing a new file that writes what the program has read ?
It's the same loop.

It doesn't matter a bean whether you're reading from a FILE* fp of a file you've opened using fopen(), from a FILE* opened using popen(), or from stdin. fgets() works the same regardless.

Likewise for output, the functions writing to a FILE* don't care whether it's stdout, stderr, a file or a pipe.

Before you do anything with a file, you need to practice simply copying the "input" to the "output". Until you can do this reliably, there is no point worrying about what you're going to do as far as processing the data is concerned. Because sooner or later, you'll end up processing some garbage data, then wondering what the hell is going on. And it will all be down to erroneous use of files.