Programming in C

Input / Output
 stdin, stdout, stderr

• When your C program begins to execute,

three input/output devices are opened
automatically.
• stdin
– The “standard input” device, usually your keyboard
• stdout
– The “standard output” device, usually your monitor
• stderr
– The “standard error” device, usually your monitor
• Some C library I/O functions automatically
use these devices
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 Formatted Console Output

• In C formatted output is created using the

printf( ) function.
• printf( ) outputs text to stdout
• The basic function call to printf( ) is of
the form
printf( format, arg1, arg2, … );
where the format is a string containing
– conversion specifications
– literals to be printed

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 printf( ) conversions
Conversions specifications begin with % and
end with a conversion character.
Between the % and the conversion character
MAY be, in order
• A minus sign specifying left-justification
• The minimum field width
• A period separating the field width and precision
• The precision that specifies
• Maximum characters for a string
• Number of digits after the decimal for a floating
point
• Minimum number of digits for an integer
• An h for “short” or an l (letter ell) for long
See K&R section 7.2 and appendix section B1.2
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 Common printf( )
Conversions
• %d -- the int argument is printed as a decimal
number
• %u -- the int argument is printed as an unsigned
number
• %s -- prints characters from the string until ‘\0’ is
seen or the number of characters in the (optional)
precision have been printed (more on this later)
• %f -- the double argument is printed as a floating
point number
• %x, %X -- the int argument is printed as a
hexadecimal number (without the usual leading
“0x”)
• %c - the int argument is printed as a single
character
• %p - the pointer argument is printed (implementation
dependent)
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 printf( ) Examples
int anInt = 5678;
double aDouble = 4.123;
#define NAME “Bob”

/* what is the output from each printf( ) */

printf (“%d is a large number\n”, anInt);
printf (“%8d is a large number\n”, anInt);
printf (“%-8d is a large number\n”, anInt);
printf (“%10.2f is a double\n”, aDouble);
printf( “The sum of %d and %8.4f is %12.2f\n”,
anInt, aDouble, anInt + aDouble);
printf (“Hello %s\n”, NAME);

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 Formatted Output Example
• Use field widths to align output in columns
int i;
for (i = 1 ; i < 5; i++)
printf("%2d %10.6f %20.15f\n", i,sqrt(i),sqrt(i));

12 1234567890 12345678901234567890
1 1.000000 1.000000000000000
2 1.414214 1.414213562373095
3 1.732051 1.732050807568877
4 2.000000 2.000000000000000

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 Keyboard Input
In C, keyboard input is accomplished using the scanf(
) function. scanf reads user input from stdin.

Calling scanf( ) is similar to calling printf( )

scanf( format, arg1, arg2, ... )
The format string has a similar structure to the format
string in printf( ). The arguments are the
addresses of the variables into which the input is
store.

See K & R section 7.4 and Appendix section B1.3 for a

detailed description of scanf( )

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 scanf( ) format string
The scanf( ) format string usually contains
conversion specifications that tell scanf( )
how to interpret the next “input
“ field”. An
input field is a string of non-whitespace
characters.
The format string usually contains
– Blanks or tabs which are ignored
– Ordinary characters which are expected to match
the next (non-whitespace) character input by the
user
– Conversion specifications usually consisting
• % character indicating the beginning of the conversion
• An optional h, l (ell) or L
• A conversion character which indicates how the input
field is to be interpreted.
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 Common scanf( )
•
•
conversions
%d -- a decimal (integer) number
%u - an unsigned decimal (integer) number
• %x -- a hexadecimal number
– The matching argument is the address of an int
– May be preceded by h to indicate that the argument is the address of
a short or by l (ell) to indicate that the argument is the address of a
long rather than an int
• %f, %e -- a floating point number with optional sign, optional
decimal point, and optional exponent
– The matching argument is the address of a float
– May be preceded by l (ell) to indicate the argument is of the address
of a double rather than a float
• %s -- a word (a string delimited by white space, not an entire line)
– The matching argument is the address of a char or the name of a char
array
– The caller must insure the array is large enough to for the input string
and the terminating \0 character
– More on this later
• %c - a single character
– The matching arguments is the address of a char
– Does not skip over white-space
– More on this later

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 scanf( ) examples

int age;
double gpa;

printf(“Input your age: “);

scanf( “%d”, &age ); /* note & */
printf(“ input your gpa: “);
scanf (“%lf”, &gpa );

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 Unix input redirection
• By default, stdin is associated with the user’s
keyboard, but Unix allows us to redirect stdin to
read data from a file when your program is executed.
All scanf( ) statements in your program read from
this file instead of the user’s keyboard with no
change to your code.
• Redirecting input from a file is useful for debugging --
you don’t have to continually retype your input.
• Suppose your program’s name is Project1 and you
wish to get your input from a file named data1. To
redirect stdin to read from data1, use this command
at the Unix prompt
unix> Project1 < data1

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 Unix output redirection
• By default, stdout is associated with the user’s
console, but Unix allows us to redirect stdout to
output text to a file when your program is
executed. All printf( ) statements in your
program output to this file instead of the user’s
console, otherwise your program is unaffected.
• Suppose your program’s name is Project1 and you
wish to write your output to a file named logfile1.
To redirect stdout to write to logfile1, use this
command at the Unix prompt
unix> Project1 > logfile

• Can you redirect both input and output?

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 Text File I/O
• Reading and writing from/to a text file is similar to
getting input from stdin (with scanf) and writing to
stdout (with printf).
• Reading data from a text file is accomplished with
the function fscanf( ). This function works the
same as scanf( ), but requires an additional
parameter which is a “handle” to the file.
• Reading a line from a text file is accomplished using
the fgets( ) function. This function is similar to
gets( ) but requires a “handle” to a file and a max
character count.
• Similarly, writing to a text file is accomplished with
the function fprintf() which works the same as
printf( ), but also requires a “handle” to the file to
be read.
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 Opening and Closing
To read or write from a text file using fscanf(
), fegets( ) or fprintf( ), the file must
first be opened using fopen( ). The file
should be closed using fclose( ) when all
I/O is complete.
fopen( ) returns a handle to the file as the
type FILE* (a pointer to a FILE struct) which
is then used as the argument to fscanf(),
fgets( ), fprintf( ) and fclose( ).
The return value from fopen( ) should be
checked to insure that the file was in fact
opened.
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 fopen( )
• fopen( ) requires two parameters
– The name of the text file to be opened
– The text file open “mode”
• “r” - open the file for reading only
• “w” - create the file for writing; if the file exists,
discard the its contents
• “a” - append; open or create the file for writing at
the end
• “r+” - open the file for reading and writing
• “w+” - create the file for reading and writing; if the
file exists, discard its contents
• “a+” - open or create the file for reading or writing
at the end
• See K & R appendix B1.1
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 Using fopen( )

• Open the file named “bob.txt

“ ” for reading
FILE * myFile = fopen( “bob.txt”, “r”);
• If fopen( ) fails, the special value NULL is
returned. All calls to fopen should be
checked
FILE *myFIle = fopen (“bob.txt”, “r”)
If (myFile == NULL)
{
/* handle the error */
}
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 fscanf.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h> /* for “exit” */
int main ( )
{
double x ;
FILE *ifp ;

/* try to open the file for reading, check if successful */

/* if it wasn't opened exit gracefully */
ifp = fopen("test_data.dat", "r") ;
if (ifp == NULL) {
printf ("Error opening test_data.dat\n");
exit (-1);
}
fscanf(ifp, "%lf", &x) ; /* read one double from the file
*/
fclose(ifp); /* close the file when finished */

/* check to see what you read */

printf("x = %.2f\n", x) ;
return 0;
}
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 Detecting end-of-file
with fscanf
• When reading an unknown number of data
elements from a file using fscanf( ), we
need a way to determine when the file has
no more data to read, i.e, we have reached
the “end of file”.
• Fortunately, the return value from
fscanf( ) holds the key. fscanf( ) returns
an integer which is the number of data
elements read from the file. If end-of-file is
detected the integer return value is the
special value EOF
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 EOF example code
/* code snippet that reads an undetermined number of
integer student ages from a file and prints them out
as an example of detecting EOF
*/
FILE *inFile;
int age;

inFile = fopen( “myfile”, “r” );

if (inFile == NULL) {
printf ("Error opening myFile\n");
exit (-1);
}

while ( fscanf(infile, “%d”, &age ) != EOF )

printf( “%d\n”, age );

fclose( inFile );
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 fprintf.c
/* fprintf.c */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h> /* exit */
int main ( )
{
double pi = 3.14159 ;
FILE *ofp ;

/* try to open the file for writing, check if successful */

/* if it wasn't exit gracefully */
ofp = fopen("test.out", “w") ;
if (ofp == NULL) {
printf ("Error opening test.out\n");
exit (-1);
}

/* write to the file using printf formats */

fprintf(ofp, “Hello World\n”);
fprintf(ofp, “PI is defined as %6.5lf\n”, pi);

fclose(ofp); /* close the file when finished reading */

return 0;
}
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 fprintf vs printf
fscanf vs scanf
• Function prototypes are identical except
that fprintf and fscanf require FILE*
parameter
• Format strings identical
• fscanf, fprintf are more general
• printf can be written using fprintf
– fprintf( stdout, ....)
• Similarly, scanf can be written using
fscanf
– fscanf( stdin, .... )
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 Errors to stderr
• Errors should be output to stderr using fprintf
rather to stdout using printf( )
• Do this
– fprintf( stderr, “this is the error message\n” );
instead of this
– printf( “this is the error message\n” );
• For example
ofp = fopen("test.out", “w") ;
if (ofp == NULL) {
fprintf (stderr, "Error opening test.out\n");
exit (-1);
}

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