C program to get first word of each line from a .txt file and print that word onto another .txt file: Kind of works but also prints random letters

Question

So we have this file called dictionary1.txt and it has words with their pronounciation right next to them. What I want to do is to get the first word from each line and print them onto another txt file that the program creates from scratch. My code does it but it also prints random Chinese letters in between English words, I don't know why.

Here's what the ouput file looks like: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LYfNV.jpg

(Pronounciations are seperated from the actual words in each line with a blankspace in dictionary1.txt)

My code:

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

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
char line[100];
int i = 0;
FILE* fp1 = fopen("dictionary1.txt", "r");
FILE* fp2 = fopen("dictionary2.txt", "w");

if (fp1 == NULL || fp2 == NULL){
    printf("ERROR");
    return -1;
}

while (fgets(line, 100, fp1) != NULL){
    while (line[i] != ' '){
        fputc(line[i], fp2);
        i++;
    }
    i=0;
    fputc('\0', fp2);
}

return 0;
}

I tried fputc('\n', fp2) as well bu t no matter what I couldn't get onto the next line in the file I created from scratch. I also can't get rid of all the random Chinese letters.

EDIT: I figured it out. The .txt file I was working on was saved in Unicode formatting, which didn't work well with my program. I turned it into ANSI and now it works like a charm.

Your program works as intended for me (after replacing the `fputc('\0', fp2)` with `fputc('\n', fp2)`), also in case there was no space in a line, I checked for newlines. The only thing i can think of is, that your input line doesn't contain a space at the first 100 characters, thus you get a buffer overflow and random garbage turns up in your output file. — redxef, Oct 24 '17 at 21:39
mine still doesn't work. I tested it with a smaller .txt file and it worked. when I run it on a huge dictionary it still prints random characters between words... — , Oct 25 '17 at 19:49

Fabio Strocco · Answer 1 · 2017-10-24T22:13:45.013

\n is not the right line separator on all operating systems and all editors.

If you are editing your txt files on Notepad, try fputs ("\r\n", fp2);, where \r means carriage return (cursor returns at the first character of the line) and \n new line.

Generally speaking, Windows uses '\r\n' as line separator, the '\n' character is displayed as something else than end line, at least in Notepad. Linux and Mac OS use different line separators. You may also want to try fprintf(fp2, "\n"); Check this out \n and \r seem to work everywhere. Why is line.separator more portable?

If you don't mind using C++, you could try to create an output stream os and write os << endl Note that some compilers may automatically convert '\n' into the corresponding operating system end line character/caracther sequence, whereas some may not.

Another thing, change the while loop condition into line[i] != ' ' && line[i] != '\0' and close the file fp2 using fclose.

still doesn't work. I tested it with a smaller .txt file and it worked. when I run it on a huge dictionary it still prints random characters between words. that being said, i encountered another weird problem. when I added the second condition you added to the if control, it lost the words too. random letters only. edit: i corrected '\0' to '\n' and it went back to printing random letters as well as the actual words... — , Oct 25 '17 at 19:52
When opening a file in normal text mode, the c library handles translations of `\n` to `\r\n`. — redxef, Oct 26 '17 at 22:20

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 20:36

0

.txt file was saved using Unicode formatting. I turned it into ANSI and everything was suddenly fixed.

answered Oct 25 '17 at 20:36

C program to get first word of each line from a .txt file and print that word onto another .txt file: Kind of works but also prints random letters

2 Answers2