Question

Below is part of my code to read data from a text file, strip out the HTML and print out just the normal text. This all work swell but i am having a problem with reading all of the text file. How would i read the entire text file, understand that i will probably need to use malloc but am unsure of how to do so.

int i, nRead, fd;
int source;
char buf[1024];
int idx = 0;
int opened = 0;

if((fd = open("data.txt", O_RDONLY)) == -1)
{
    printf("Cannot open the file");
}
else
{
    nRead = read(fd, buf, 1024);
    printf("Original String ");
    for(i=0; i<nRead; i++)
    {
        printf("%c", buf[i]);
    }

    printf("\nReplaced String ");

    for(i=0; i<nRead; i++)
    {
        if(buf[i]=='<') {
            opened = 1;
        } else if (buf[i] == '>') {
            opened = 0;
        } else if (!opened) {
            buf[idx++] = buf[i];
        }           
        //printf("%c", buf[i]);
    }
}
    buf[idx] = '\0';
    printf("%s\n", buf);
close(source);

Answer 1

If you want to read the complete file do the following:

1. Open the file
2. Use fstat – see fstat – to get the size
3. malloc the buffer i.e. buffer = malloc(fileStats.st_size);
4. Read the file fread(buffer, fileStats.st_size, 1);
5. Close the file.
6. Play with the buffer to your hearts content.

You may wish to add one to the buffer size to place the null character into it.