Question

I have a word file with 3 words. I need to read each word into an array. I tried doing this with fscanf(), but it doesn’t work. What am I doing incorrectly?

#include <stdio.h>

void main(){
    char words_array[80];
    FILE *dictionary;
    dictionary = fopen("dictionary.txt", "r");
    fscanf (dictionary, "%s", words_array);
    printf("The content of words_array is: %s, %s, %s, \n", words_array[0], words_array[1], words_array[2]);
}

I get the following error when I try to compile:

warning: format ‘%s’ expects argument of type ‘* char’ but argument has type ‘int’

The dictionary.txt file is as follows:

apple
orange
bananna

Thanks all!

Answer 1

Assuming you have only one word (fruit) in one line (and < 80 characters long) in the dictionary.txt, the following should work!

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char words_array[80];
    FILE *dictionary;
    dictionary = fopen("dictionary.txt", "r");
    while (fscanf (dictionary, "%s", words_array) == 1) {
        printf("%s \n", words_array);
    }

    return 0;
}

Output:

$ gcc fsca.c 
$ ./a.out 
apple 
orange 
bananna 
$ cat fsca.c 

---

Adding an alternative answer as per request from the OP author.

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char word1[80], word2[80], word3[80];
    FILE *dictionary;
    dictionary = fopen("dictionary.txt", "r");
    fscanf(dictionary, "%s", word1);
    fscanf(dictionary, "%s", word2);
    fscanf(dictionary, "%s", word3);
    printf("%s %s %s\n", word1, word2, word3);

    return 0;
}

Output

$ gcc fsca.c 
$ ./a.out 
apple orange bananna
$