CODEWITHSUNDEEP
carrays
makhlaghi
makhlaghi

Reputation: 3986

Import ASCII table in C as array

I have a series of data saved as a table in an ASCII file, for example:

1   100  2.345
2   342  8.233
3   65   89.23

I have just returned back to C after a few years of working in Python and wondered isn't there already any library that can do this import? Something like numpy.loadtxt() in Python? For example to output a float or a double array? I remember in the past I had to write a program myself to do this job in C (C99 for example), is there any standard package that will do the import? How about saving the results to an ASCII file? I can write a program myself for both of these but I don't want to repeat what other people have definitely done before me!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1402

Answers (2)

makhlaghi
makhlaghi

Reputation: 3986

I wrote my own library to do this (with the help of the kind people here who answered my questions very promptly), you can see it here. It does the job of turning a table of data (with an unknown number of headers, columns and rows) to a C array that can be used in the program. I would appreciate any suggestions. Thank you.

Upvotes: 1

jxh
jxh

Reputation: 70392

For machine generated files with a regular format, fscanf() can work flawlessly:

int index;
int x;
double y;

while (fscanf(infile, "%d %d %lf\n", &index, &x, &y) == 3) {
    /* ... */
}

If you want to be able to handle files with any number of columns and just have the files fed into a data structure that you can later search or manipulate, then it is probably better to use a program or script to generate the same table in CSV or XML format. Then, use a library like libcsv or Mini-XML to parse the file for you.

Upvotes: 1

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