Question

the printf statement here only prints out the last word inside of the file. Why is that?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void)
{
    FILE *fp;
    int c;
    char string[100];
    fp = fopen("exam.txt", "r");
    c = getc(fp);
    while(c!=EOF)
    { 
        fscanf(fp, "%s", string);
        c = getc(fp);
    }
    fclose(fp);
    printf("%s", string);
    return 0; 

}

Answer 1

Because you only print once at the end…

printf("%s", string); 

You need to print inside this loop:

while(c!=EOF)
{ 
    fscanf(fp, "%99s", string);
    printf("%s\n", string);  // now you can see the files as you read it.
     c = getc(fp);
} 

if you want to see each line. You’re just overwriting string each time.

Also, you don’t initialize int c before using it.

Break down of fscanf():

 fscanf(fp,       // read from here   (file pointer to your file)
        "%99s",   // read this format (string up to 99 characters)
         string); // store the data here (your char array)

Your loop condition is while the next character isn’t EOF meaning End Of File (a condition that happens after all the data has been read out of the file)

So:

while (we're not at the end of the file)
     read up a line and store it in string
     get the next character

You’ll note your algorithm doesn’t check for anything in that string, it just writes to it. This will overwrite the data in there each time. That’s why you only see the last line from your file, because you keep over writing string and the last thing in there happens to be the last line you read before seeing the EOF character and breaking out of the while loop.