CODEWITHSUNDEEP
carrays
user2591837
user2591837

Reputation: 51

reading a text file into an array

I'm really new to programming, and after thinking hard about this for a week for a summer project, I'd really appreciate some help!

I'm trying to read in a long text file, which is just a long string (NB: not an actual programming string) of letters, and then put each letter into its place in the grid (the aim of the program is ultimately to solve a wordsearch) so far I've come up with the program below, which doesn't seem to be producing a grid, but rather just reprints the text file, preceded by the following: 

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1138\cocoasubrtf510    
{\fonttbl\f0\fmodern\fcharset0 Courier;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
\paperw11905\paperh16837\margl1440\margr1440\vieww10800\viewh8400\viewkind0
\deftab720
\pard\pardeftab720

\f0\fs24 \cf0

The program that I've written is this:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdio.h> 
#include <stdlib.h> 
#include <math.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

int main()
{
    int i,j;
    char myarray[26][26],x;
    FILE *myfile;

    for (j=0; j<26; j++)                 //initialise array elements all to zero
    {
        for (i=0; i<26; i++)
        {
            myarray[i][j]=0;
        }
    }

    myfile=fopen("*redacted*","r");
    if (myfile!=NULL) //check file actually opened
    {
        for (i=0; i<26; i++)
        {
            for(j=0; j<26; j++)
            {
                fscanf(myfile,"%c",&x); //read the values in
                myarray[i][j]=x;
            }
        }
        // data is now in the array called myarray
        fclose(myfile);        
    }

    else
    {
        printf("File not found");
    }

    for(i=0;i<26;i++)
    {
        for(j=0;j<26;j++)
        {
            printf("%c",myarray[i][j]);
        }
    }

}

Thank you for any help you can offer

Upvotes: 5

Views: 11021

Answers (2)

Curt
Curt

Reputation: 5722

Here's the beauty of C:

You can read the file in a single operation, and save yourself the looping:

Something like 

fread(myArray, sizeof(myArray), myfile)

You should probably initialize the array to all zeros before you do this, though:

char myArray[26][26] = { 0 };

Or fill it with zeroes if you don't initialize it:

 memset(myArray, 0, sizeof(myArray));

Also, you might want to print a newline ("\n") at the end of each outer loop in your printing section: otherwise the file contents will appear as one long, continuous string.

Upvotes: 4

ecotax
ecotax

Reputation: 1953

I'm not going to do your summer project, but here's some remarks:

1) The text file is not a text file but an RTF file, which is text with formatting. You probably made/saved it using TextEdit. If so, use the 'Make Plain Text' menu item to fix this.

2) Your program seems to be doing the following: read 26x26 (why 26?) characters from a file (including spaces, newlines etcetera), put them in a 26x26 array, and then print them one by one. I'm not clear what you're trying to achieve, but it appears to have something to do with formatting the array, in which case you will probably want to think about how to handle whitespace characters in the input, and printing them yourself when generating output.

Upvotes: 2

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