C Programming, Part 2: Text Input And Output - angrave/SystemProgramming GitHub Wiki
Use printf
. The first parameter is a format string that includes placeholders for the data to be printed. Common format specifiers are %s
treat the argument as a c string pointer, keep printing all characters until the NULL-character is reached; %d
print the argument as an integer; %p
print the argument as a memory address.
A simple example is shown below:
char *name = ... ; int score = ...;
printf("Hello %s, your result is %d\n", name, score);
printf("Debug: The string and int are stored at: %p and %p\n", name, &score );
// name already is a char pointer and points to the start of the array.
// We need "&" to get the address of the int variable
By default, for performance, printf
does not actually write anything out (by calling write) until its buffer is full or a newline is printed.
Use puts( name )
and putchar( c )
where name is a pointer to a C string and c is just a char
Use fprintf( _file_ , "Hello %s, score: %d", name, score);
Where _file_ is either predefined 'stdout' 'stderr' or a FILE pointer that was returned by fopen
or fdopen
Yes! Just use dprintf(int fd, char* format_string, ...);
Just remember the stream may be buffered, so you will need to assure that the data is written to the file descriptor.
Use sprintf
or better snprintf
.
char result[200];
int len = snprintf(result, sizeof(result), "%s:%d", name, score);
snprintf returns the number of characters written excluding the terminating byte. In the above example, this would be a maximum of 199.
The return value of snprintf is the length that would have been written given enough space, excluding the ending NULL byte.
char x[5];
int size = snprintf(x, 5, "%s%s%s", "12", "34", "56"); // writes "1234" + null
printf("%d\n", size); // output 6
Source: this StackOverflow post and man page.
Use fflush( FILE* inp )
. The contents of the file will be written. If I wanted to write "Hello World" with no newline, I could write it like this.
int main(){
fprintf(stdout, "Hello World");
fflush(stdout);
return 0;
}
Let's say that you have a function call that just failed (because you checked the man page and it is a failing return code). perror(const char* message)
will print the English version of the error to stderr
int main(){
int ret = open("IDoNotExist.txt", O_RDONLY);
if(ret < 0){
perror("Opening IDoNotExist:");
}
//...
return 0;
}
Use long int strtol(const char *nptr, char **endptr, int base);
or long long int strtoll(const char *nptr, char **endptr, int base);
.
What these functions do is take the pointer to your string *nptr
and a base
(ie binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal etc) and an optional pointer endptr
and returns a parsed value.
int main(){
const char *nptr = "1A2436";
char* endptr;
long int result = strtol(nptr, &endptr, 16);
return 0;
}
Be careful though! Error handling is tricky because the function won't return an error code. If you give it a string that is not a number it will return 0. This means you cant differentiate between a valid "0" and an invalid string. See the man page for more details on strol behavior with invalid and out of bounds values. A safer alternative is use to sscanf
(and check the return value).
int main(){
const char *input = "0"; // or "!##@" or ""
char* endptr;
long int parsed = strtol(input, &endptr, 10);
if(parsed == 0){
// Either the input string was not a valid base-10 number or it really was zero!
}
return 0;
}
Use scanf
(or fscanf
or sscanf
) to get input from the default input stream, an arbitrary file stream or a C string respectively.
It's a good idea to check the return value to see how many items were parsed.
scanf
functions require valid pointers. It's a common source of error to pass in an incorrect pointer value. For example,
int *data = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int));
char *line = "v 10";
char type;
// Good practice: Check scanf parsed the line and read two values:
int ok = 2 == sscanf(line, "%c %d", &type, &data); // pointer error
We wanted to write the character value into c and the integer value into the malloc'd memory.
However, we passed the address of the data pointer, not what the pointer is pointing to! So sscanf
will change the pointer itself. i.e. the pointer will now point to address 10 so this code will later fail e.g. when free(data) is called.
The following code assumes the scanf won't read more than 10 characters (including the terminating byte) into the buffer.
char buffer[10];
scanf("%s",buffer);
You can include an optional integer to specify how many characters EXCLUDING the terminating byte:
char buffer[10];
scanf("%9s", buffer); // reads up to 9 charactes from input (leave room for the 10th byte to be the terminating byte)
The following code is vulnerable to buffer overflow. It assumes or trusts that the input line will be no more than 10 characters, including the terminating byte.
char buf[10];
gets(buf); // Remember the array name means the first byte of the array
gets
is deprecated in C99 standard and has been removed from the latest C standard (C11). Programs should use fgets
or getline
instead.
Where each has the following structure respectively:
char *fgets (char *str, int num, FILE *stream);
ssize_t getline(char **lineptr, size_t *n, FILE *stream);
Here's a simple, safe way to read a single line. Lines longer than 9 characters will be truncated:
char buffer[10];
char *result = fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin);
The result is NULL if there was an error or the end of the file is reached.
Note, unlike gets
, fgets
copies the newline into the buffer, which you may want to discard-
if (!result) { return; /* no data - don't read the buffer contents */}
int i = strlen(buffer) - 1;
if (buffer[i] == '\n')
buffer[i] = '\0';
One of the advantages of getline
is that will automatically (re-) allocate a buffer on the heap of sufficient size.
// ssize_t getline(char **lineptr, size_t *n, FILE *stream);
/* set buffer and size to 0; they will be changed by getline */
char *buffer = NULL;
size_t size = 0;
ssize_t chars = getline(&buffer, &size, stdin);
// Discard newline character if it is present,
if (chars > 0 && buffer[chars-1] == '\n')
buffer[chars-1] = '\0';
// Read another line.
// The existing buffer will be re-used, or, if necessary,
// It will be `free`'d and a new larger buffer will `malloc`'d
chars = getline(&buffer, &size, stdin);
// Later... don't forget to free the buffer!
free(buffer);