Question

The following code reads a text file one character at the time and print it to stdout:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char file_to_open[] = "text_file.txt", ch;
    FILE *file_ptr;

    if((file_ptr = fopen(file_to_open, "r")) != NULL)
    {
        while((ch = fgetc(file_ptr)) != EOF)
        {
            putchar(ch);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        printf("Could not open %s\n", file_to_open);
        return 1;
    }
    return(0);
}

But instead of printing to stdout [putchar(ch)] I want to search the file for specific strings provided in another textfile ie. strings.txt and output the line with the match to out.txt

text_file.txt:

1993 - 1999 Pentium
1997 - 1999 Pentium II
1999 - 2003 Pentium III
1998 - 2009 Xeon
2006 - 2009 Intel Core 2

strings.txt:

Nehalem
AMD Athlon
Pentium

In this case the three first lines of text_file.txt would match. I have done some research on file operations in C, and it seems that I can read one character at the time with fgetc [like I do in my code], one line with fgets and one block with fread, but no word as I guess would be perfect in my situation?

Answer 1

I am assuming this is a learning exercise and you are simply looking for a place to start. Otherwise, you should not reinvent the wheel.

The code below should give you an idea of what is involved. It is a program that allows you to specify the name of file to be searched and a single argument to search in that file. You should be able to modify this to put the phrases to search for in an array of strings and check if any of the words in that array appear in any of the lines read.

The key function you are looking for is strstr.

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

#ifdef DEBUG
#define INITIAL_ALLOC 2
#else
#define INITIAL_ALLOC 512
#endif

char *
read_line(FILE *fin) {
    char *buffer;
    char *tmp;
    int read_chars = 0;
    int bufsize = INITIAL_ALLOC;
    char *line = malloc(bufsize);

    if ( !line ) {
        return NULL;
    }

    buffer = line;

    while ( fgets(buffer, bufsize - read_chars, fin) ) {
        read_chars = strlen(line);

        if ( line[read_chars - 1] == '\n' ) {
            line[read_chars - 1] = '\0';
            return line;
        }

        else {
            bufsize = 2 * bufsize;
            tmp = realloc(line, bufsize);
            if ( tmp ) {
                line = tmp;
                buffer = line + read_chars;
            }
            else {
                free(line);
                return NULL;
            }
        }
    }
    return NULL;
}

int
main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    FILE *fin;
    char *line;

    if ( argc != 3 ) {
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

    fin = fopen(argv[1], "r");

    if ( fin ) {
        while ( line = read_line(fin) ) {
            if ( strstr(line, argv[2]) ){
                fprintf(stdout, "%s\n", line);
            }
            free(line);
        }
    }

    fclose(fin);
    return 0;
}

Sample output:

E:\Temp> searcher.exe searcher.c char
char *
    char *buffer;
    char *tmp;
    int read_chars = 0;
    char *line = malloc(bufsize);
    while ( fgets(buffer, bufsize - read_chars, fin) ) {
        read_chars = strlen(line);
        if ( line[read_chars - 1] == '\n' ) {
            line[read_chars - 1] = '\0';
                buffer = line + read_chars;
main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    char *line;