What is the difference between fscanf and fgetc? I have a few people arguing with me on the differences. I thought fgetc reads character by character of a file. I thought fscanf reads the whole file. Is that corrrect? Can someone elaborate on what I forgot?
COKEDUDE 27 Junior Poster in Training
gerard4143 371 Nearly a Posting Maven
How the hell would we know what you forgot?
deceptikon 1,790 Code Sniper Team Colleague Featured Poster
Is that corrrect?
Not at all. Have you checked a C reference manual? The only similarities fgetc and fscanf have is they read input from a stream, and fscanf can simulate fgetc.
The people you were arguing with, what were their points? Perhaps we can clear up any errors on both sides if you elaborate.
COKEDUDE 27 Junior Poster in Training
My understanding of fgetc is it reads character by character of a file. They think fscanf can also read character by character of a file. I do not think that is correct. I think fscanf is used for reading an entire file. I may not be explaing that with the correct terminology but I have used it for reading an entire file before.
deceptikon 1,790 Code Sniper Team Colleague Featured Poster
My understanding of fgetc is it reads character by character of a file
It reads one character from a stream. The stream may or may not be a stream to a file. For example, fgetc(stdin) is perfectly acceptable.
They think fscanf can also read character by character of a file. I do not think that is correct.
It can. The call that's equivalent to fgetc is fscanf(stream, "%c", &myChar).
I think fscanf is used for reading an entire file.
No.
but I have used it for reading an entire file before
It's possible with a single call, but very dependent on the format of the file. Most of the time you read lines from a file in a loop rather than everything.
COKEDUDE 27 Junior Poster in Training
Thank you :). Were both saying the same thing but can't explain it in a way the other understands.
gerard4143 371 Nearly a Posting Maven
One small subtle point.
fgetc() reads the next character from stream and returns it as an unsigned char cast to an int, or EOF on end of file or error.
COKEDUDE 27 Junior Poster in Training
And if you need a char you always cast it like this :).
while ((c = fgetc(pFile)) != EOF)
{
vertices[addcounter] = (char)c;
}
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