In C, there are many posts concerning using fgetc
after fscanf
, dealing with an additional \n
, but I am seeing another issue when using them in the reverse order; fscanf
after fgetc
.
When using fscanf
after fgetc
, I get a different fscanf
-result to if I just omit fgetc
(in the example script, just hard-coding num=1000
and commenting-out the block using fgetc
).
I can replicate this correct fscanf
-result while still using fgetc
if I rewrite the file contents to the myFile
variable, as in the below script. Removing this line produces the different incorrect fscanf
-result.
What is causing the difference in the fscanf
-result when using fgetc
first, and how can I address the issue?
/* First read tab-delimited 4-digit int data from a text file,
* parsing into an array of the correct size num, then compute
* the mean of the array while avoiding overflow. */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(){
FILE *myFile;
myFile = fopen("int_values.txt", "r");
int c=0, i=0;
float mean = 0.0;
// Identifying there are 1000 values in the tab-delimited file.
// Using fgetc
int num = 1;
while ((c=fgetc(myFile)) != EOF ){
if (c == '\t')
++num;
}
int arr[num]; // Array of correct size for all values from file.
// Redeclaring since fgetc seems to break fscanf
myFile = fopen("int_values.txt", "r");
// Read and store each value from file to array.
for (i=0; i<num; i++){
fscanf(myFile, "%d ", &arr[i]);
}
// Compute average cumulatively to avoid overflow.
mean = arr[0]
for (i=1; i<num; i++){
//printf("In the %dth place, arr has value %d.\n", i, arr[i]);
mean *= (float)i / (float)(i+1);
mean += arr[i] / (float)(i+1);
}
fclose(myFile);
printf("The overall mean of the %d values in the file is %f.\n\n", num, mean);
return 0;
}
Identifying there are 1000 values in the tab-delimited file.
Do not count tabs. Instead, read the int
s. It's far too easy for the number of tabs to not relate correctly to the number of int
.
Sum the int
into a long long
to avoid overflow. Use double
for generic floating-point math.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void) {
FILE *myFile = fopen("seal_weights.txt", "r");
if (myFile) {
int num = 0;
long long sum = 0;
int value;
// return 1 on success, EOF on end-of-file, else 0 on non-numeric input
while (fscanf(myFile, "%d", &value) == 1) {
sum += value;
num++;
}
double mean = num ? (double) sum / num : 0.0;
printf("The overall mean of the %d values in the file is %f.\n\n", num,
mean);
// read in again and save values if truly desired.
// This step not needed to compute average.
rewind(myFile);
int i;
int arr[num];
for (i = 0; i < num; i++) {
if (fscanf(myFile, "%d", &arr[i]) != 1) {
break;
}
}
// Use arr[] in some way.
fclose(myFile);
}
return 0;
}