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Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

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Alexbeav

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Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 19th, 2007

Hi all I'm studying C and I have to do an exercise that requires me to open a file and count the number of times a letter occurs,either small or capital.
For example,I have a text file in C:\text.txt with the contents "World In Conflict".So in my example the letter "c" is counted twice.After I have finished counting the letters,I have to make
a graphical representation that's to be like this :

 Help with Code Tags 
 C Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
6	|						
5	|						
4	|						
3	|						
2	|			*			
1	|			*			*
-	+	-	-	-	-	-	-
	|	A	B	C	D	E	F
6	|						
5	|						
4	|						
3	|						
2	|			*			
1	|			*			*
-	+	-	-	-	-	-	-
	|	A	B	C	D	E	F

that's from A to F,obviously I need from A-Z.

This is what I have done so far :

 Help with Code Tags 
 c Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
 
FILE *a;
char b;
int count;
 
int main()
{
 clrscr();
 a=fopen("C:\\text.txt","r");
 
while (1)
{
 b=fgetc(a);
 if (b>64 && b<91) ++count
 if (b>97 && b<122) ++count
 if (b==EOF)
 break;
}
fclose(a);
printf("letters %d",count);
getch();
}
#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>

FILE *a;
char b;
int count;

int main()
{
 clrscr();
 a=fopen("C:\\text.txt","r");

while (1)
{
 b=fgetc(a);
 if (b>64 && b<91) ++count
 if (b>97 && b<122) ++count
 if (b==EOF)
 break;
}
fclose(a);
printf("letters %d",count);
getch();
}

I thought using ASCII would be a good idea,but how can I specifically count the letters using ASCII ? I could do it using

if (b == "a" && b == "A") ++counta (this counts all "a"s and "A"s)

for all letters,but I don't think that's the point of this exercise.

Also,how do I design the GUI ? Our teacher said we should use "gotoxy" but I haven't been able to get a handle on it.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Last edited by WaltP; Oct 19th, 2007 at 10:22 pm. Reason: Added CODE tags -- you actually typed right over how to use them when you entered this post...

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WaltP

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Re: Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 19th, 2007

Each letter (in fact each character) has a specific numeric value. Each character can therefore be used as an index into an array in which you can increment the appropriate element. Then run through the array when done and output the values you need.

Unzip and run the attached program for an ASCII chart.

Attached Files

charlist.zip (14.0 KB, 6 views)

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Aia

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Re: Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 20th, 2007

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Originally Posted by Alexbeav

Hi all I'm studying C and I have to do an exercise that requires me to open a file and count the number of times a letter occurs,either small or capital.

There's a conversation about the same topic over here. Maybe it might help.
Take a look at this also.

Last edited by Aia; Oct 20th, 2007 at 1:32 am.

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iamthwee

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Re: Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 20th, 2007

>Our teacher said we should use "gotoxy"
I laughed at this!

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Lardmeister Lardmeister is offline

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Re: Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 20th, 2007

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Originally Posted by iamthwee

>Our teacher said we should use "gotoxy"
I laughed at this!

Care to explain? Does not even look like a joke to me!

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dwks

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Re: Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 20th, 2007

gotoxy() is an ancient Borland function. It's very unportable. No new code should use it or anything from <conio.h>, such as getch() or clrscr().

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if (b == "a" && b == "A") ++counta (this counts all "a"s and "A"s)

'a' is a single character. "a" is a string. Use single quotes if you mean a single character.

The functions from <ctype.h> will make your life easier. There are such functions as tolower(), which converts a letter to lowercase, and isalpha(), which returns true if a character is a letter. These functions are also portable, so even if you could use

 Help with Code Tags 
 C Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
if(c >= 'a' && c <= 'z')
if(c >= 'a' && c <= 'z')

it's much more portable to use

 Help with Code Tags 
 C Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
if(islower(c))
if(islower(c))

dwk

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iamthwee

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Re: Reading from a file and counting how many time each letter occurs.

Oct 21st, 2007

>Care to explain? Does not even look like a joke to me!

Yes the point of the matter is that the same output can be recreated without gotoxy() which is non-portable - meaning it won't work on some compilers.

Anyone writing code should strive to make their solutions portable and as close to what the standard dictates, unless there is a very good reason for doing otherwise. In most cases there isn't. The people who primarily use gotoxy() are ignorant of the portability issues although there are exceptions.

Unfortunately we have to blame the pedagogues for teaching the subject with the, oh so notoriously infamous, turbo c compiler. Where students feel predisposed to use clrscr(), gotoxy() getch() and all the other misnomers.

An even greater crime perhaps, are the teachers who teach c++ with the old turbo c compiler, but I'll leave that little bedtime story for another occasion.

Last edited by iamthwee; Oct 21st, 2007 at 4:15 pm.

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