Question

I wanted to show the whole c program on screen which should be visible to user.

I used textView but i am getting errors as the code contains special symbols.

for example:

 android:text=" #include <stdio.h>
 int main()
{
int x, y, temp;

printf("Enter the value of x and y\n");
scanf("%d%d", &x, &y);

printf("Before Swapping\nx = %d\ny = %d\n",x,y);

temp = x;
x = y;
y = temp;

printf("After Swapping\nx = %d\ny = %d\n",x,y);

return 0;
 }" />

I also want that the user should be able to scroll the code as the codes may be larger than the example.I am a noob so please suggest me any alternate for the textView to display the code.

Answer 1

Save your C code in a file in assets folder, for example “res/assets/code.c”.

Write a function that reads the content of a file to a String:

private String readFileInAssetsDir(String filename) {
    BufferedReader br = null;
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    try {
        br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(getAssets().open(filename)));
        String line;
        while((line = br.readLine()) != null)
            sb.append(line + "\n");
    } catch(Exception e) {
        // TODO
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

And now define a WebView (not a TextView) in your layout (the advantages are that you can show any character, and WebView provides zoom and scroll directly):

<WebView
    android:id="@+id/webView"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="0dip"
    android:layout_weight="1" />

And finally I would enclose all C code in a <pre></pre> tag and then show it inside the WebView widget:

    String plainCode = readFileInAssetsDir("code.c");
    String htmlCode = "<pre>" + plainCode + "</pre>";
    webView.loadDataWithBaseURL("", htmlCode, "text/html", "utf-8", "");