I have a file that has the following format:
abc dca
2
aa bb
casca casss
abc dca
3
aa bb
casca casss
casca casss
abcd abcd
0
Basically it goes by blocks (in the previous example there would be 3 blocks). A particular block would be:
abc dca
2
aa bb
casca casss
In all case we would have:
First line: Always two words separated by a space.
Second line: A number
From here, we would have as many lines as the previous number, and each line would have always two words.
How can I parse a file so that for each block I can call a function passing some stuff that I calculate with what I have found in the block?
Use a minimal state machine:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int qrgc, char **argv)
{
char buff[111];
char one[10], two[10];
char left[10], right[10];
int num;
size_t len;
int state,rc;
state =0;
while(fgets (buff, sizeof buff, stdin)) {
len = strlen (buff);
while (len && buff[len-1] == '\n') buff[--len] = 0;
switch (state) {
case 0:
rc = sscanf(buff, "%s %s", left, right);
if (rc < 2) goto quit;
state=1;
break;
case 1:
rc = sscanf(buff, "%d", &num);
if (rc < 1) goto quit;
state=2;
break;
default:
if (!len) {state = 0; continue; }
rc = sscanf(buff, "%s %s", one, two);
if (rc < 2) goto quit;
break;
}
}
quit: ;
return 0;
}
There are many ways to do this. The two I thought of are:
If the file is not very large, then you could read it all into a list of strings (one string for each line).
Another way is to pass create a function that takes a file handle and the previous block.
(I do not want to write dynamic arrays in C)