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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-21T11:05:58+00:00

I’m having trouble with file scans and are these 2 expressions equivalent to each

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I’m having trouble with file scans and are these 2 expressions equivalent to each other in the manner that they operate? 

#include <stdio.h>
FILE *point;
int number

 while ( fscanf(point, "%d", &number) != -1)

 while ( !feof(point) )

(test file):

39203 Thao Nguyen

92039 Steven Gonzales

For some reason the first statement works for me but the second statement just gives me seg faults, because it keeps reading the file when there not left to be read.

I tried a third way

 while ( point != EOF) // but this gives me a error of integer to pointer error
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    EOF is a constant defined in stdio.h usually as -1. That’s the reason that the first one happens to work for you. However, it’s bad practice to use the literal -1 as an implementation can theoretically define EOF however it wants. So you really want to do something along the lines of while ( fscanf(point, "%d", &number) != EOF )

    See the fscanf man page:

    http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man3/scanf.3.html

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