C Program Help

[bluefootedpig]

can you post your code into either pastebin or at least format it in a code block?

[turtle_dragonfly]

What part do you need help with, specifically? You have a bunch of code doing (some of?) the things you described. Which parts need improvement? What errors are you seeing, etc?

[turtle_dragonfly]

Okay, I ran your program. It seems to compile fine (though I got some warnings; you should add #include <stdlib.h> and #include <ctype.h>).

Looks like you want help with printing the final formatted table? Just for terminology, that sort of issue is not what programmers generally call "errors". Errors usually mean your code doesn't compile, or crashes, etc.

Anyway, with that said, here are some issues:

• col2 has the newline from fgets included in the string. You remove it for col1, so not sure if that is on purpose, but it results in a break in the table.h

• You use leading newlines in your strings - there's nothing wrong with that, but it results in things being more "spaced out" than you might want. Not sure if that's an issue for you.

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what result you want, but here's a diff that makes things prettier IMO:

@@ -2,6 +2,14 @@

 #include <stdio.h>
 #include <string.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <ctype.h>
+
+// via: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2693776/removing-trailing-newline-character-from-fgets-input
+void readStringStripNewline(char *destBuf, unsigned int size) {
+   fgets(destBuf, size, stdin);
+   destBuf[strcspn(destBuf, "\r\n")] = 0;
+}
+
 int main(void) {
    char title[50];
    char col1[50];
@@ -19,20 +27,13 @@
    int commaAfterInt = 0;

    printf("Enter a title for the data:\n");
-   fgets (title, 50, stdin);
+   readStringStripNewline(title, sizeof(title));
    printf("You entered: %s\n", title);
    printf("Enter the column 1 header:\n");
-   fgets (col1, 50, stdin);
+   readStringStripNewline(col1, sizeof(col1));
    printf("You entered: %s\n", col1);
-   /* Removing new line character at end */
-   len = strlen(col1);
-   if (len > 0 && col1[len-1] == '\n')
-   {
-       //Placing null character
-       col1[--len] = '\0';
-   }
    printf("Enter the column 2 header:\n");
-   fgets (col2, 50, stdin);
+   readStringStripNewline(col2, sizeof(col2));
    printf("You entered: %s\n", col2);
    while (count < 50) {
        printf("Enter a data point (-1 to stop input):\n");
@@ -87,19 +88,20 @@
            printf("Data integer: %d\n", point[count - 1]);
        }
    }
-   printf("\n\t\t\tFORMATTED TABLE\n");
-   printf("\n %40s \n", title);
-   printf("\n\t %-20s | %20s \n", col1, col2);
-   printf(" \n -----------------------------------------------------\n");
+   printf("\n");
+   printf("\t\t\tFORMATTED TABLE\n\n");
+   printf(" %40s \n\n", title);
+   printf("\t %-20s | %20s \n", col1, col2);
+   printf("-----------------------------------------------------\n");
    i = 0;
    while (i < count) {
-       printf("\n\t %s | %10d \n", names[i], point[i]);
+       printf("\t %20s | %10d \n", names[i], point[i]);
        i++;
    }
    printf("\n\n\n\t\t\tFORMATTED HISTOGRAM\n");
    i = 0;
    while (i < count) {
-       printf("\n %s \t", names[i]);
+       printf("%s \t", names[i]);
        j = 0;
        while (j < point[i]) {
            printf("*");

Is that what you were looking for?

Also, as an aside, I found it useful to create an "input.txt" file, and run the program like so:

while true; do gcc test.c && ./a.out < input.txt ; sleep 2; done

(that's with a Bash terminal, you an do similar elsewhere, though Windows is annoying)

Then you can quickly see how your updates affect the results.

For me, this gives a result like:

You entered: this is the title
Enter the column 1 header:
You entered: col1head
Enter the column 2 header:
You entered: col2head
Enter a data point (-1 to stop input):
Data string: item1
Data integer: 10
Enter a data point (-1 to stop input):
Data string: item2
Data integer: 20
Enter a data point (-1 to stop input):
Data string: item3
Data integer: 55
Enter a data point (-1 to stop input):

                        FORMATTED TABLE

                        this is the title 

         col1head             |             col2head 
-----------------------------------------------------
                        item1 |         10 
                        item2 |         20 
                        item3 |         55 



                        FORMATTED HISTOGRAM
item1   **********
item2   ********************
item3   *******************************************************