What is wrong with this program for scanning a file and returning number of lines/paragraphs/words?

Question

I wrote this program to accept a file and scan the number of lines, paragraphs, and words in the file.

The problem is, it does not stop scanning, ever. It never comes out of the while (nextChar!='\n') loop. So the functions processBlank and copyText never stop running. It never hits the EOF.

I am unsure how to proceed. I am at a loss for a solution so any help is appreciated :)

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

void initialize(int *p1,int *p2,int *p3,int *p4)
{
    *p1=0;
    *p2=0;
    *p3=0;
    *p4=0;
}

void processBlank(char *nextChar,int *wordsinLine,FILE *ctPtr)
{
    while (*nextChar==' ')
    {
        printf("%c",*nextChar);
        *nextChar=fgetc(ctPtr);
    }
    *wordsinLine+=1;
}

void copyText(char *nextChar,FILE *ctPtr)
{
    while (*nextChar!=' ')
    {
        printf("%c",*nextChar);
        *nextChar=fgetc(ctPtr);
    }
}

void updateCount(int *numWords,int *wordsinLine,int *numParagraphs,int *numLines)
{
    *numWords+=*wordsinLine;
    if (*wordsinLine==0)
        *numParagraphs+=1;
    *wordsinLine=0;
    *numLines+=1;
}

void printTotal(int numWords,int numLines,int numParagraphs)
{
    printf("\n\n\n\nTotal number of words is: %d\n\n",numWords);
    printf("Total number of lines is: %d\n\n",numLines);
    printf("Total number of paragraphs is: %d\n\n\n\n",numParagraphs);
}

void main()
{
    int numWords,numLines,numParagraphs,wordsinLine;
    initialize(&numWords,&numLines,&numParagraphs,&wordsinLine);
    FILE *ctPtr;
    char nextChar;
    if ((ctPtr=fopen("Q2read.txt", "r"))==NULL)
        printf("File could not be opened\n");
    else
    {
        nextChar=fgetc(ctPtr);
        while (nextChar!=feof(ctPtr))
        {

            while (nextChar!='\n')
            {
                processBlank(&nextChar,&wordsinLine,ctPtr);
                copyText(&nextChar,ctPtr);
            }
            updateCount(&numWords,&wordsinLine,&numParagraphs,&numLines);
        }
        printTotal(numWords,numLines,numParagraphs);
        fclose(ctPtr);
    }
}

Answer 1

1. Major: Change nextChar!=feof(ctPtr) to nextChar != EOF.
   feof() return "nonzero if and only if the end-of-file indicator is set"
   EOF is some negative number.
   2 different things - not well comparable.

2. Minor: change void main() to int main(void)

3. Minor Change char nextChar to int nextChar (also related function calls.)

4. Major: copyText(): change to while (*nextChar != ' ' && *nextChar != EOF) {

5. In main() change to while (nextChar != '\n' && nextChar != EOF) { Add EOF test.

Answer 2

Instead of reading your file byte by byte, (INCREDIBLY SLOW), look up the fgets() function. That will get a whole LINE of text for you, and then you can process it from there. It DOES take a max string length, so if you use something reasonable, like 1024, ALWAYS make sure you check your string for a newline, if it is NOT in the string, you need to read AGAIN, and append, but before you do, check to see if you ARE in fact at EOF, as a lot of files just might not HAVE that final \n, or \r\n, or \r, or whatever craziness the OS you are using uses...

Answer 3

fgetc() returns an int, and EOF is usually -1. Declare nextChar as an int and check it against EOF (not feof(); feof() is a function that tests a stream for eof)

You could instead check feof(stream) != 0 (say with if (feof(stream))) to see if you are at EOF, but I think just checking the return value of fgetc() is nicer.