Question

I need to have a user input a word then compare the word with a text file to see if it is correct. The user has 3 attempts to enter the word before the program terminates. My issue is reading the word from the file I know it’s something simple that I have wrong. I should also clarify that the error I’m getting is in the compiler I haven’t gotten to the point of being able to compare the strings yet!

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
    FILE *fp;
    fp = fopen("secret.txt","r");
    char guess[10];
    const char secret[10];
    int i, c;
    c = getc(fp);
    fgets(secret, sizeof(secret), fp);

    for (i=0; i < 3; i++)
    {
        printf("Please guess the word: \n");
        scanf("%s", guess);

        while (c !=EOF)
        {   
            if (strcmp(secret,guess)==0)
            {
                printf("Your guess was correct");
                return 0;
            }
            else
            {
                printf("Your guess was incorrect. Please try again\n");
            }
        } 
        fclose (fp);
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

What is

c = getc(fp);

needed for? My “guess” would be that you read the first character of the word into c and then secret misses the first character.

EDIT: Instead of using getc for EOF checking, which as said corrupts the read word (and this while loop is rubbish anyway), just check the return value of fgets:

if(fgets(secret, sizeof(secret), fp) == NULL)
    //file is empty or other error occurred

and remove this infinite while(c != EOF) loop.

So it should rather look something like:

FILE *fp = fopen("secret.txt","r");
char guess[10];
const char secret[10];
int i;
if(fgets(secret, sizeof(secret), fp) == NULL)
{
    printf("Error while reading file\n");
    return -1;
}
fclose(fp);

for (i=0; i < 3; i++)
{
    printf("Please guess the word: \n");
    scanf("%s", guess);
    if (strcmp(secret,guess) == 0)
    {
        printf("Your guess was correct");
        return 0;
    }
    else
        printf("Your guess was incorrect. Please try again\n");
}
return 0;