CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cdata-structuresvisual-studio-2012scanf
Adam Schachne
Adam Schachne

Reputation: 3

Reading from .txt file using fscanf in C

My assignment is to take input from a txt file and read that into parts of a struct array, then manipulate it, but I'm having trouble with reading from the file.

my struct is as follows:

   typedef struct Employee
   {
        char first[7], initial, last[9], street[16], city[11], state[2], zip[5];
        int age;
        char sex;
        int tenure;
        float salary;
   } Employee;

and within my main: I have defined MAX to be 100

FILE *payfile;
Employee worker[MAX];
int i = 0, num;
float average;

payfile = fopen("payfile.txt","r");

while(!feof(payfile))
 {
      fscanf(payfile,"%s %c %s %s %s %s %s %d %c %d %f",
        worker[i].first,&worker[i].initial,worker[i].last,worker[i].street,
        worker[i].city,worker[i].state,worker[i].zip,&worker[i].age,&worker[i].sex,
        &worker[i].tenure,&worker[i].salary);
      i++;
 }

here is the txt file we are to read from:

    ADA     A AGUSTA    33 BABBAGE ROAD  LOVELACE    GB 19569 28 F 2 350.50
    ISSAC   A ASIMOV    99 FICTION WAY   AMHERST     MA 63948 58 M 6 423.88
    HUMPHRY R BOGART    71 SAM STREET    HOLLYWOOD   CA 48482 56 M 5 366.00
    ALBERT  G EINSTEIN  94 ENERGY WAY    PRINCETON   NJ 47474 67 M 8 780.00
    EMMYLOU L HARRIS    66 COUNTRY ROAD  NASHVILLE   TN 72647 38 F 2 767.42
    JAMES   T KIRK      11 SPACE STREET  VULCAN      CA 82828 46 M 1 235.70
    TED     L KOPPEL    55 ABC PLACE     WASHINGTON  DC 37376 48 M 9 909.44
    DAVID   T LETTERMAN 14 WNBC AVENUE   NEW YORK    NY 19338 47 M 5 445.65
    STEVIE  R NICKS     31 MUSIC ROAD    CHICAGO     IL 23459 38 F 8 460.88
    MONTY   P PYTHON    76 SILLY STREET  LONDON      GB 80939 44 M 2 320.50
    ROGER   R RABBIT    15 LOONEY TOONS  HOLLYWOOD   CA 91343 24 M 4 259.53
    SALLY   W RIDE      21 COLUMBIA WAY  HOUSTON     TX 91123 30 F 9 707.80
    ROD     Q SERLING   11 TWLIGHT ZONE  SAN DIEGO   CA 93939 56 M 1 440.00
    LUKE    R SKYWALKER 43 MILKY WAY     NEW YORK    NY 12343 35 M 5 660.00

so I'm having some trouble with fscanf accuracy. To check what worker is containing, I'm using printf("%s",worker[0].first) and printf("%c",worker[0].initial) ... etc.

When I scan for the first string in the first line, I get ADA, then scan for whitespace and get the next char, A. Good so far. Then I scan for white space and take the the next string, which returns AGUSTA. But now I run into this problem. I need to get 33 BABBAGE ROAD into worker[0].street, but changing the parameter "%s " to "%16c " doesn't work. It instead includes part of the city.

What am I doing wrong? What do I change to scan the respective lines of code with correct accuracy?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 15287

Answers (2)

BLUEPIXY
BLUEPIXY

Reputation: 40145

char first[7], initial, last[9], street[16], city[11], state[2], zip[5];

char size is not enough including the EOS if you want to read with strings (C string).

change to 

typedef struct Employee {
     char first[8], initial, last[10], street[17], city[12], state[3], zip[6];
     int age;
     char sex;
     int tenure;
     float salary;
} Employee;

control character %s in scanf reading with a space-delimited, specify read size and unread charactor, follow for example.

    while(EOF!=fscanf(payfile,"%7s %c %9s %16[^\n] %11[^\n] %2s %5s %d %c %d %f",
          worker[i].first,&worker[i].initial,worker[i].last,worker[i].street,
          worker[i].city,worker[i].state,worker[i].zip,&worker[i].age,&worker[i].sex,
          &worker[i].tenure,&worker[i].salary))
    {
        i++;
    }

You can delete if not required for trailing spaces then.

Upvotes: 1

Brandon Yates
Brandon Yates

Reputation: 2052

You could read the street in as a series of strings, ie %s %s %s. Then concatenate them with strcat() into one string.

This is not a general solution because streets with more than 3 words (eg "19 N 3rd street") will fail. But I suspect it's good enough for your assignment. In a real life application the fields would be separated with some sort of a delimiter, usually a comma (see .csv). Since that doesn't seem to exist in your application, just do it this way and then tell your teacher to give you better assignments in the future.

Upvotes: 0

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