fscanf vs fgetc

[COKEDUDE]

What is the difference between fscanf and fgetc? I have a few people arguing with me on the differences. I thought fgetc reads character by character of a file. I thought fscanf reads the whole file. Is that corrrect? Can someone elaborate on what I forgot?

[gerard4143]

How the hell would we know what you forgot?

[deceptikon]

Is that corrrect?

Not at all. Have you checked a C reference manual? The only similarities fgetc and fscanf have is they read input from a stream, and fscanf can simulate fgetc.

The people you were arguing with, what were their points? Perhaps we can clear up any errors on both sides if you elaborate.

[COKEDUDE]

My understanding of fgetc is it reads character by character of a file. They think fscanf can also read character by character of a file. I do not think that is correct. I think fscanf is used for reading an entire file. I may not be explaing that with the correct terminology but I have used it for reading an entire file before.

[deceptikon]

My understanding of fgetc is it reads character by character of a file

It reads one character from a stream. The stream may or may not be a stream to a file. For example, fgetc(stdin) is perfectly acceptable.

They think fscanf can also read character by character of a file. I do not think that is correct.

It can. The call that's equivalent to fgetc is fscanf(stream, "%c", &myChar).

I think fscanf is used for reading an entire file.

No.

but I have used it for reading an entire file before

It's possible with a single call, but very dependent on the format of the file. Most of the time you read lines from a file in a loop rather than everything.

[COKEDUDE]

Thank you :). Were both saying the same thing but can't explain it in a way the other understands.

[gerard4143]

One small subtle point.

fgetc() reads the next character from stream and returns it as an unsigned char cast to an int, or EOF on end of file or error.

[COKEDUDE]

And if you need a char you always cast it like this :).

while ((c = fgetc(pFile)) != EOF)
{
    vertices[addcounter] = (char)c;
}