For some reason when I send argv it gets sends back the wrong file pointer. For example if i send the string from argv of getty.txt it sends back shakes file pointer and if I send genesis.txt char array it sends back getty.txt. How do I get it to send the right file pointer back?
for (i = 3; i < argc; i++) {
printf("%s\n", argv[i]);
pattern(determineFile(argv[i]), argv[2]);
}
FILE* determineFile(char* file) {
if (strcmp(file,"getty.txt"))
return getty;
else if (strcmp(file, "shakes.txt"))
return shakes;
else if (strcmp(file, "genesis.txt"))
return genesis;
else
return NULL;
}
Input:
grep the getty.txt genesis.txt shakes.txt
Output:
getty.txt
shakes.txt: All the word's a stage,
shakes.txt: And all the men and women merely players.
shakes.txt: They have their exits and their entrances;
genesis.txt
getty.txt: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this
getty.txt: continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
shakes.txt
C strcmp returns 0 if the strings match. Try:
if(strcmp(a, b) == 0) {/* ... */}
Related
So for an assignment I have for my Computer Systems class, I need to type characters in the command line when the program runs.
These characters (such as abcd ef) would be stored in argv[].
The parent sends these characters one at a time through a pipe to the child process which then counts the characters and ignores spaces. After all the characters are sent, the child then returns the number of characters that it counted for the parent to report.
When I try to run the program as it is right now, it tells me the value of readIn is 4, the child processed 0 characters and charCounter is 2.
I feel like I'm so close but I'm missing something important :/ The char array for a and in the parent process was an attempt to hardcode the stuff in to see if it worked but I am still unsuccessful. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
// Characters from command line arguments are sent to child process
// from parent process one at a time through pipe.
//
// Child process counts number of characters sent through pipe.
//
// Child process returns number of characters counted to parent process.
//
// Parent process prints number of characters counted by child process.
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h> // for fork()
#include <sys/types.h> // for pid_t
#include <sys/wait.h> // for waitpid()
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int fd[2];
pid_t pid;
int status;
int charCounter = 0;
int nChar = 0;
char readbuffer[80];
char readIn = 'a';
//char a[] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'};
pipe(fd);
pid = fork();
if (pid < 0) {
printf("fork error %d\n", pid);
return -1;
}
else if (pid == 0) {
// code that runs in the child process
close(fd[1]);
while(readIn != 0)
{
readIn = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
printf("The value of readIn is %d\n", readIn);
if(readIn != ' ')
{
charCounter++;
}
}
close(fd[0]);
//open(fd[1]);
//write(fd[1], charCounter, sizeof(charCounter));
printf("The value of charCounter is %d\n", charCounter);
return charCounter;
}
else
{
// code that runs in the parent process
close(fd[0]);
write(fd[1], &argv, sizeof(argv));
//write(fd[1], &a, sizeof(a));
close(fd[1]);
//open(fd[0]);
//nChar = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
nChar = charCounter;
printf("CS201 - Assignment 3 - Andy Grill\n");
printf("The child processed %d characters\n\n", nChar);
if (waitpid(pid, &status, 0) > 0)
{
if (WIFEXITED(status))
{
}
else if (WIFSIGNALED(status))
{
}
}
return 0;
}
}
You're misusing pipes.
A pipe is a unidirectional communication channel. Either you use it to send data from a parent process to a child process, or to send data from a child process to the parent. You can't do both - even if you kept the pipe's read and write channels open on both processes, each process would never know when it was its turn to read from the pipe (e.g. you could end up reading something in the child that was supposed to be read by the parent).
The code to send the characters from parent to child seems mostly correct (more details below), but you need to redesign child to parent communication. Now, you have two options to send the results from child to parent:
Use another pipe. You set up an additional pipe before forking for child-to-parent communication. This complicates the design and the code, because now you have 4 file descriptors to manage from 2 different pipes, and you need to be careful where you close each file descriptor to make sure processes don't hang. It is also probably a bit overkill because the child is only sending a number to the parent.
Return the result from the child as the exit value. This is what you're doing right now, and it's a good choice. However, you fail to retrieve that information in the parent: the child's termination status tells you the number of characters processed, you can fetch this value with waitpid(2), which you already do, but then you never look at status (which contains the results you're looking for).
Remember that a child process has its own address space. It makes no sense to try to read charCounter in the parent because the parent never modified it. The child process gets its own copy of charCounter, so any modifications are seen by the child only. Your code seems to assume otherwise.
To make this more obvious, I would suggest moving the declarations of variables to the corresponding process code. Only fd and pid need to be copied in both processes, the other variables are specific to the task of each process. So you can move the declarations of status and nChar to the parent process specific code, and you can move charCounter, readbuffer and readIn to the child. This will make it very obvious that the variables are completely independent on each process.
Now, some more specific remarks:
pipe(2) can return an error. You ignore the return value, and you shouldn't. At the very least, you should print an error message and terminate if pipe(2) failed for some reason. I also noticed you report errors in fork(2) with printf("fork error %d\n", pid);. This is not the correct way to do it: fork(2) and other syscalls (and library calls) always return -1 on error and set the errno global variable to indicate the cause. So that printf() will always print fork error -1 no matter what the error cause was. It's not helpful. Also, it prints the error message to stdout, and for a number of reasons, error messages should be printed to stderr instead. So I suggest using perror(3) instead, or manually print the error to stderr with fprintf(3). perror(3) has the added benefit of appending the error message description to the text you feed it, so it's usually a good choice.
Example:
if (pipe(fd) < 0) {
perror("pipe(2) error");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
Other functions that you use throughout the code may also fail, and again, you are ignoring the (possible) error returns. close(2) can fail, as well as read(2). Handle the errors, they are there for a reason.
The way you use readIn is wrong. readIn is the result of read(2), which returns the number of characters read (and it should be an int). The code uses readIn as if it were the next character read. The characters read are stored in readbuffer, and readIn will tell you how many characters are on that buffer. So you use readIn to loop through the buffer contents and count the characters. Something like this:
readIn = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
while (readIn > 0) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i < readIn; i++) {
if (readbuffer[i] != ' ') {
charCounter++;
}
}
readIn = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
}
Now, about the parent process:
You are not writing the characters into the pipe. This is meaningless:
write(fd[1], &argv, sizeof(argv));
&argv is of type char ***, and sizeof(argv) is the same as sizeof(char **), because argv is a char **. Array dimensions are not kept when passed into a function.
You need to manually loop through argv and write each entry into the pipe, like so:
int i;
for (i = 1; i < argv; i++) {
size_t to_write = strlen(argv[i]);
ssize_t written = write(fd[1], argv[i], to_write);
if (written != to_write) {
if (written < 0)
perror("write(2) error");
else
fprintf(stderr, "Short write detected on argv[%d]: %zd/zd\n", i, written, to_write);
}
}
Note that argv[0] is the name of the program, that's why i starts at 1. If you want to count argv[0] too, just change it to start at 0.
Finally, as I said before, you need to use the termination status fetched by waitpid(2) to get the actual count returned by the child. So you can only print the result after waitpid(2) returned and after making sure the child terminated gracefully. Also, to fetch the actual exit code you need to use the WEXITSTATUS macro (which is only safe to use if WIFEXITED returns true).
So here's the full program with all of these issues addressed:
// Characters from command line arguments are sent to child process
// from parent process one at a time through pipe.
//
// Child process counts number of characters sent through pipe.
//
// Child process returns number of characters counted to parent process.
//
// Parent process prints number of characters counted by child process.
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h> // for strlen()
#include <unistd.h> // for fork()
#include <sys/types.h> // for pid_t
#include <sys/wait.h> // for waitpid()
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int fd[2];
pid_t pid;
if (pipe(fd) < 0) {
perror("pipe(2) error");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
pid = fork();
if (pid < 0) {
perror("fork(2) error");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (pid == 0) {
int readIn;
int charCounter = 0;
char readbuffer[80];
if (close(fd[1]) < 0) {
perror("close(2) failed on pipe's write channel");
/* We use abort() here so that the child terminates with SIGABRT
* and the parent knows that the exit code is not meaningful
*/
abort();
}
readIn = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
while (readIn > 0) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i < readIn; i++) {
if (readbuffer[i] != ' ') {
charCounter++;
}
}
readIn = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
}
if (readIn < 0) {
perror("read(2) error");
}
printf("The value of charCounter is %d\n", charCounter);
return charCounter;
} else {
int status;
if (close(fd[0]) < 0) {
perror("close(2) failed on pipe's read channel");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
int i;
for (i = 1; i < argc; i++) {
size_t to_write = strlen(argv[i]);
ssize_t written = write(fd[1], argv[i], to_write);
if (written != to_write) {
if (written < 0) {
perror("write(2) error");
} else {
fprintf(stderr, "Short write detected on argv[%d]: %zd/%zd\n", i, written, to_write);
}
}
}
if (close(fd[1]) < 0) {
perror("close(2) failed on pipe's write channel on parent");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (waitpid(pid, &status, 0) < 0) {
perror("waitpid(2) error");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (WIFEXITED(status)) {
printf("CS201 - Assignment 3 - Andy Grill\n");
printf("The child processed %d characters\n\n", WEXITSTATUS(status));
} else if (WIFSIGNALED(status)) {
fprintf(stderr, "Child terminated abnormally with signal %d\n", WTERMSIG(status));
} else {
fprintf(stderr, "Unknown child termination status\n");
}
return 0;
}
}
Some final notes:
The shell splits arguments by spaces, so if you start the program as ./a.out this is a test, the code will not see a single space. This is irrelevant, because spaces are supposed to be ignored anyway, but if you want to test that the code really ignores spaces, you need to quote the parameters so that the shell does not process them, as in ./a.out "this is a test" "hello world" "lalala".
Only the rightmost (least significant) 8 bits of a program's exit code are used, so WEXITSTATUS will never return more than 255. If the child reads more than 255 characters, the value will wrap around, so you effectively have a character counter modulo 256. If this is a problem, then you need to go with the other approach and set up a 2nd pipe for child-to-parent communication and write the result there (and have the parent read it). You can confirm this on man 2 waitpid:
WEXITSTATUS(status)
returns the exit status of the child. This consists of the least
significant 8 bits of the status argument that the child
specified in a call to exit(3) or _exit(2) or as the argument for a return
statement in main(). This macro should be employed only if
WIFEXITED returned true.
I'm developing a console app in Objective-C. I've got it working, but when manually testing edge cases, I found a strange behavior that I can't explain.
Basically, I've set up scanf() in a loop, and when the user types invalid info, it prints an "invalid option" message. Then, if the input is less than 9 characters long, it goes through the loop again as intended. But, if the input is 9 characters or longer, it gives a EXC_BAD_ACCESS error on a certain line.(This error doesn't happen if I comment out said line.)I can't figure out any reason why 8 vs 9 characters being read would cause this error. Any ideas?
Below are the two methods that I figure are relevant, with a comment on the line throwing the error. If you think other referenced code may be causing this, let me know and I'll add that code.
-(void)startMenu {
printf("\nGAME OPTIONS\n| WinningScore = %d (w) | Name = %s (n) | Back (b) |\n",
_options.winningScore, [_options.name UTF8String]);
}
-(void)start {
char selectedOption;
char w = 'w';
char n = 'n';
char b = 'b';
while(YES) {
[self startMenu]; // This line gets the EXC_BAD_ACCESS error
// if the user puts in 9 or more characters.
// If it is commented out, then no error is thrown.
scanf("%s", &selectedOption);
if(selectedOption == w) {
[self setWinningScore];
} else if(selectedOption == n) {
[self setName];
} else if(selectedOption == b) {
break;
} else {
printf("'%s' is not a valid option.\n", &selectedOption);
}
}
}
It this was C (and the post is tagged C) I'd suggest:
char selectedOption;
....
scanf(" %c", &selectedOption);
...
printf("'%c' is not a valid option.\n", selectedOption);
The failure showing up after a 9 charterer input is serendipity. scanf("%s", &selectedOption); is certainly wrong for reading a single character. Any input starts causing problems. Use the matching format specifier and variable.
[Edit]
A C-like solution.
If more than 1 char is desire for input, use the idea put forth by #Devolus. Example:
char selectedOption[10];
if (fgets(selectedOption, sizeof selectedOption, stdin) == NULL)
Handle_EOForIOerror();
// Get rid of potential trailing \n if desired.
size_t len = strlen(selectedOption);
if (len > 0 && selectedOption[len-1] == '\n') selectedOption[--len] = '\0';
You should use fgets instead of scanf here, as you can limit the number of characters in the buffer.
scanf is potentially unsafe because the buffer can be exceeded.
I'm new to Objective-C, and this is really my first program that is interactive. I've been learning for about 2 weeks now.
So, my question is: typically I've noticed when you have multiple scanf's in a row, they each wait for input - however in this situation, where I ask for account owner name, and balance - it fires both NSLog functions instead of waiting for the first input.
Here is my main:
int main(int argc, char* argV[]) {
NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
bank *columbiaBank = [[bank alloc] init];
int iteration = 0;
while (true) {
int selection = 0;
NSLog(#"\n1. Add Account \n2. Remove Account \n3. Modify Account \nWhat would you like to do?:");
scanf("%i", &selection);
if (selection == 1) {
NSLog(#"\nEnter account owner:");
char accountOwner;
scanf("%c", &accountOwner);
NSLog(#"\nEnter opening balance:");
float openingBalance;
scanf("%f", &openingBalance);
// create and add new account
bankAccount *newAccount = [[bankAccount alloc] initWithProps:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%c", accountOwner] :[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%i", iteration] :openingBalance];
[columbiaBank addAccount:newAccount];
[newAccount release];
NSLog(#"\nAccount successfully added!");
} else if (selection == 2) {
NSLog(#"\nEnter account id:");
int accountId;
scanf("%i", &accountId);
// remove account
[columbiaBank removeAccount:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%i", accountId]];
NSLog(#"\nAccount successfully removed!");
} else if (selection == 3) {
NSLog(#"\nThe bank currently has %i accounts.", columbiaBank.totalAccounts);
NSLog(#"\nThe bank's current balance from all accounts is $%f", columbiaBank.totalBankBalance);
NSLog(#"\n-- Output of all account info --");
[columbiaBank printAccounts];
} else {
NSLog(#"You did not enter a valid action.");
}
iteration++;
}
[columbiaBank release];
[pool drain];
return false;
}
Other users already said everything about it. The scanf inserts a new line "\n" automatically in the buffer that is passed to the next scanf. This is because any unwritten data is written in the next stream.
I want to add that you can use fflush to clear the stream buffer, in this case you want to use
scanf("%i", &selection);
fflush(stdin)
to clear the buffer of stdin (the console input) after every scanf.
Edit: I didn't know that, but As #Peter Kowalski said the use of fflush(stdin), for input stream, should be avoided because it has an undefined behaviour for input streams.
Cprograming.com FAQ > Why fflush(stdin) is wrong.
But it seems that there is not a guaranteed method to flush the input stream in C.
Cprograming.com FAQ > Flush the input stream
I know that in C++ a standard way is to use cin.ignore() after cin >> selection but I don't know how this can be done in C. Maybe some more experienced user can give some insight on what is happening with fflush(stdin).
*[Note: If you are going to use Objective-C you might wish to use input conversion methods from Cocoa rather than mix Cocoa (NSLog) and stdio (scanf). But that doesn't answer your question...]
When parsing integers, floats and even strings scanf skips whitespace - e.g. spaces, tabs, end of line, etc. - and every input line ends with at least an end of line (which may be a carriage return, line feed, or both depending on the system). This means that after reading your first integer there is still, at least, an end of line in the input and the attempt to read a character will return it - hence no wait for input. To discard the remaining, unused, input you can use fpurge. E.g.:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char* argV[])
{
int selection = 0;
fputs("\n1. Add Account \n2. Remove Account \n3. Modify Account \nWhat would you like to do?: ", stdout);
scanf("%i", &selection);
if (selection == 1)
{
fputs("\nEnter account owner: ", stdout);
fpurge(stdin); // skip any input left in the buffer as %c takes the very next character and does not skip whitespace
char accountOwner;
scanf("%c", &accountOwner);
fputs("\nEnter opening balance: ", stdout);
float openingBalance;
scanf("%f", &openingBalance);
printf("%c - %f\n", accountOwner, openingBalance);
}
}
Note that reading in character strings does skip whitespace, so if your account owner was a string you would not need the fpurge.
Presumably you want the account owner name to be more than a single character, but you're only reading a single character in that scanf. If you're trying to enter more than a single character there, the first scanf will read the first character, and since there's more in the input buffer, the next scanf will try to read immediately without waiting for your numeric input. If you are only using a single character for the owner name, then you'll need to consume the newline from the input buffer.
If you want to read a string as the account owner name, you'll need to allocate space for more than one character, and use %s rather than %c as your scanf format string. Also remember to check the return value for scanf. The function will return the number of items successfully scanned, or 0 if no items were scanned, typically due to invalid input, or return EOF.
char accountOwner[26];
// ...
// note that you can specify a width (max length) for a string using scanf
scanfReturn = scanf("%25s", accountOwner);
I have been developing a very simple text game using Objective C and Xcode. It is almost done but I am having a problem, the scanf method stops the loop and asks for user input while I need the computer to be running the rest of the loop, the solution I came up with was running two while loops at the same time, one being the logic loop and another being a loop for user input.
I have been doing my research and it looks like using threads are the way to go, I just have not found a tutorial that will break it down for a n00b in Objective C (I am decent in java, I just have never worked with threads). If anybody could explain them or link me to a very broken down tutorial that would be great. Or if anybody has another idea I am open to anything else.
Necessary Code (The scanf I am having a problem with has asterisks on the line):
while(running != 0)
{
if(gameState == 1)
{
if(timeToGenerateNum == true)
{
while(randNumber < 10000000)
{
randNumber = arc4random() % 100000000;
}
NSLog(#"%i", randNumber);
timeToGenerateNum = false;
}
else
{
while(time <= 2500)
{
NSLog(#"Testing");
time++;
******************scanf("%i", &userNum);************************
if(userNum == randNumber)
{
score += time;
time = 0;
timeToGenerateNum = true;
}
}
NSLog(#"Game Over! Your score was %i!", score);
running = 0;
}
}
else if(gameState == 2)
{
NSLog(#"To play, simply type in the number that appears on the screen.");
NSLog(#"But be careful, you only have a short amount of time before GAME OVER!");
NSLog(#"The quicker you type in the number the more score you get!");
NSLog(#"Are you ready to start, if so type '1' and press enter!");
scanf("%i", &gameState);
}
}
You're going to have to learn a bit about BSD (Unix, Linux) input/output to pull this off: replace your call to scanf with a non-blocking function you write to acquire input from the user's keyboard.
This function should immediately return whatever the user typed, or immediately return with a zero character count if she didn't type anything.
Read up on the select(2) system call, and keep in mind that keyboard input (standard input) is the first file descriptor, file descriptor zero.
I'm doing a small app for evaluating and analyzing transfer functions. As boring as the subject might seem to some, I want it to at least look extra cool and pro and awesome etc... So:
Step 1: Gimme teh coefficients! [A bunch of numbers]
Step 2: I'll write the polynomial with its superscripts. [The bunch of numbers in a string]
So, I write a little C parser to just print the polynomial with a decent format, for that I require a wchar_t string that I concatenate on the fly. After the string is complete I quickly try printing it on the console to check everything is ok and keep going. Easy right? Welp, I ain't that lucky...
wchar_t *polynomial_description( double *polyArray, char size, char var ){
wchar_t *descriptionString, temp[100];
int len, counter = 0;
SUPERSCRIPT superscript;
descriptionString = (wchar_t *) malloc(sizeof(wchar_t) * 2);
descriptionString[0] = '\0';
while( counter < size ){
superscript = polynomial_utilities_superscript( size - counter );
len = swprintf(temp, 100, L"%2.2f%c%c +", polyArray[counter], var, superscript);
printf("temp size: %d\n", len);
descriptionString = (wchar_t *) realloc(descriptionString, sizeof(wchar_t) * (wcslen(descriptionString) + len + 1) );
wcscat(descriptionString, temp);
counter++;
}
//fflush(stdout); //Already tried this
len = wprintf(L"%ls\n", descriptionString);
len = printf("%ls**\n", descriptionString);
len = fprintf(stdout, "%ls*\n", descriptionString);
len = printf("FFS!! Print something!");
return descriptionString;
}
During the run we can see temp size: 8 printed the expected number of times ONLY WHILE DEBUGGING, if I run the program I get an arbitrary number of prints each run. But after that, as the title states, wprintf, printf and fprintf don't print anything, yet len does change its size after each call.
In the caller function, (application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:, while testing) I put an NSLog to print the return string, and I dont get ANYTHING not even the Log part.
What's happening? I'm at a complete loss.
Im on XCode 4.2 by the way.
What's the return value from printf/wprintf in the case where you think it's not printing anything? It should be returning either -1 in the case of a failure or 1 or more, since if successful, it should always print at least the newline character after the description string.
If it's returning 1 or more, is the newline getting printed? Have you tried piping the output of your program to a hex dumper such as hexdump -C or xxd(1)?
If it's returning -1, what is the value of errno?
If it turns out that printf is failing with the error EILSEQ, then what's quite likely happening is that your string contains some non-ASCII characters in it, since those cause wcstombs(3) to fail in the default C locale. In that case, the solution is to use setlocale(3) to switch into a UTF-8 locale when your program starts up:
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
// Run "locale -a" in the Terminal to get a list of all valid locales
setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.UTF-8");
...
}