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Reading a Text File Into an Array of Lines in C
#1
Another of my once-in-a-while blog posts that could maybe be a tutorial, but instead of writing text for it I comment up the code extensively. This example demonstrates reading a text file of just about any size into an array of lines, which can then be manipulated by the user in any way desired.

It demonstrates the use of fgets, errno/strerror, as well as C memory allocation -- both malloc and realloc -- and the use of a dynamic array of pointers. It could be used as the basis for a text editor.

Code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <errno.h>

char *readLine(FILE *fp)
{
     if (!fp)
         return NULL;

     /*                                                                          
        Our temporary buffer, initialized to all 0s.                            
                                                                                
        Note I'm making this artificially small to                              
        demonstrate/test the algorithm. In a real-world                          
        application you would use the BUFSIZ macro, which                        
        is part of stdio:                                                        
                                                                                
        char buffer[BUFSIZ] = { 0 };                                            
      */
     char buffer[16] = { 0 };

     /* The line which we will return to the caller */
     char *line = NULL;

     /* Try to read a line from the file into our buffer */
     if (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), fp) != NULL)
     {
         /* OK, so we read some data. This may or may not be                    
            the entire line, if the line length exceeds the                      
            length of the buffer provided.                                      
                                                                                
            fgets puts the terminating newline into the buffer,                  
            so we check to see if that's there to determine if                  
            there is more to this line.                                          
                                                                                
            If the line is simply "hello" and the buffer provided                
            is greater in length than 6 characters, then the buffer              
            will contain the characters                                          
            'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '\n', '\0'                                  
                                                                                
            It the buffer is insufficient, say 5 characters, then                
            the buffer will contain                                              
            'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', '\0'                                            
                                                                                
            and we will know we did not get the whole line.                      
         */

         /* Get the length of the returned string into a variable */
         size_t len = strlen(buffer);

         /*                                                                      
            OK, given the string "hello", if the entire line was read            
            the string length would be 6, because the '\0' is not                
            included in the string length and the newline is present.
            So here we check that the character ONE LESS than the string
            length is the newline character. If it is, we read the entire
            string, and we overwrite the newline with a '\0' to terminate
            the string there.                                                              
         */
         if (buffer[len - 1] == '\n')
         {
             buffer[len - 1] = '\0';

             /* Now we allocate memory for the line variable to                  
                return to the caller */
             line = malloc(len);
             if (!line)
             {
                 /* Die immediately */
                 fclose(fp);
                 fprintf(stderr, "Could not allocate memory!\n");
                 exit(-1);
             }

             /* Copy buffer into the memory */
             strcpy(line, buffer);

             /* Return the line to the caller */
             return line;
         }

         /*                                                                      
            If we got here, we know we didn't get the entire line,              
            and we need to go back to fgets to get the rest. That                
            means we need to empty our buffer for the next read.                
            So, we allocate the memory required for this line and                
            copy the buffer into it. Can't forget room for the
            terminating NULL character.                                            
         */
         line = malloc(strlen(buffer) + 1);
         strcpy(line, buffer);

         /* And now we read some more, until we know we've got                  
            the entire line */
         int done = 0;
         while (!done && fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), fp) != NULL)
         {
             len = strlen(buffer);
             if (buffer[len - 1] == '\n')
             {
                 buffer[len - 1] = '\0';

                 /* We've got the entire line, so set                            
                    our done flag */
                 done = 1;
             }

             /*                                                                  
                We need to reallocate the memory for line                        
                here to expand it. If realloc fails, it returns                  
                NULL and we will need to cleanup the previously-                
                allocated memory to prevent a memory leak.                      
                                                                                
                In order to maintain a pointer to the                            
                previously-allocated memory we create a                          
                temporary variable. If that comes back from the                  
                realloc with a NULL value, we still have the line                
                pointer which points to the previously-allocated                
                memory for cleanup.                                              
             */
             char *temp = realloc(line, strlen(line) + len + 1);
             if (!temp)
             {
                 /* Cleanup allocated memory */
                 free(line);
                 fclose(fp);
                 fprintf(stderr, "Could not reallocate memory!\n");
                 exit(-1);
             }

             /* Set the line pointer to point to our newly                      
                reallocated memory */
             line = temp;

             /* Append the contents of the buffer to                            
                the line */
             strcat(line, buffer);
         }
     }

     return line;
}

int main(void)
{
     char fileToRead[4096] = { 0 };
     printf("Enter path of file to read: ");
     if (fgets(fileToRead, sizeof(fileToRead), stdin) == NULL)
     {
         fprintf(stderr, "Invalid input!\n");
         exit(-1);
     }

     /* Remove the newline from the received data */
     fileToRead[strlen(fileToRead) - 1] = '\0';

     /* Try to open the file */
     FILE *fp = fopen(fileToRead, "r");
     if (!fp)
     {
         fprintf(stderr, "Unable to open %s: %s\n",
                 fileToRead, strerror(errno));
         exit(-1);
     }

     /* Our array of lines is actually a pointer to an array of character        
        pointers, one for each line, so keep track of the number of lines. */
     char **lines = NULL;
     size_t lineCount = 0;
     char *line = NULL;

     while ((line = readLine(fp)) != NULL)
     {
         /* As noted above in the function, realloc failure means                
            we need to cleanup the previously created memory, so we              
            use a temporary to hold the returned value, keeping the              
            pointer to the previously created memory valid for cleanup          
         */
         char **temp = realloc(lines, sizeof(*lines) * lineCount + 1);
         if (!temp)
         {
             fprintf(stderr, "Unable to realloc for lines!\n");
             /* Cleanup the existing memory */
             size_t i = 0;
             for (; i < lineCount; ++i)
             {
                 free(lines[i]);
             }
             free(lines);
             fclose(fp);
             exit(-1);
         }

         /* Assign our lines variable to point to the reallocated memory */
         lines = temp;

         /* Set our newly allocated pointer to point to the line returned */
         lines[lineCount++] = line;
     }

     /* Print our lines -- backwards for fun -- and clean up */
     int j = 0;
     for (j = lineCount - 1; j >= 0; j--)
     {
         printf("%s\n", lines[j]);

         /* Free the line's memory allocated in the readLine function */
         free(lines[j]);
     }

     /* Free the array that held the lines */
     free(lines);

     fclose(fp);

     return 0;
}
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