CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c
cheater
cheater

Reputation: 93

function to read a line on c programming language

On the C book, (second edition page 29), I read the following content:

/* getline: read a line into s, return length */

    int getline(char s[], int lim)
        {
            int c, i;
            for(i=0; i<lim-1 && (c=getchar())!=EOF && c!='\n'; ++i)
                s[i] = c;
            if(c == '\n') {
                s[i] = c;
                ++i;
            }
            s[i] = '\0';
            return i;
        }

    }

My question is: why it is i<lim-1 but not i<lim in the for condition test? (ps: lim is the maximum length of a line)

Question 2: On C, is EOF counted as a character?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 94

Answers (1)

Bathsheba
Bathsheba

Reputation: 234715

  1. Space needs to be reserved for the null-terminator \0 that is appended to the string at the end of the loop. (This is how strings are modelled in C).

  2. EOF is a special value that denotes the end of a file. Note how getchar() returns an int: this is chiefly so the value of EOF doesn't have to be within the range of a char.

Upvotes: 2

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