How to get certain word length from text file

okay im trying to get a word from a text file the text file words are examples like this

like
tore
care
gone

im trying to just get one word at a time for a little game im making from it so here is part of what my code looks like



but when my program prints the words it will print the word like but also part of the other words so it becomes liketoreca something like it

how do i just make it so it gets one word at a time so if it picks the word it stops when it gets to the last letter

i was guessing something like char words[length] something like it
I'd appreciate your help

checkout emacs dissociated press mode
and Markov chains.

The conversion specifier "%c" reads a single character from the file. That's what you do in a loop.

Yiu may want to change your program and use the conversion specifier "%s" which reads a bunch of characters in one go.

do i still use char for the type im not familar with c i know in c++ i think you just use string but with c im not sure
ill play around with it thanks

ok thanks it worked the for loop though printed all the words
but i took it out and it read the first word which is what i wanted thank you so much

You need to look at the input files you're using and determine what different characters will be used to separate your words, e.g. space, carriage return, line feed etc.

Then look up the ascii values for these characters. Read characters similar to how you're already doing, but stop reading into the array after reading one of those characters, and store the number of valid characters read.

If you want you could print the array similar to how you're doing but stop after printing the number of valid characters you've previously stored.

Alternatively, you could null terminate the array by assigning 0 to the character after the last valid character you read. So suppose i has the index of the last valid character read but not the last character in the array (if it is then you need a bigger array), then do:

words[i+1] = 0;

This will allow you to print the word simply like this:

printf("%s\n", words);

instead of writing code which explicitly loops through your array and prints it out one character at a time.

do i have to specify the lenght of char words to 10 char words[10]
or is there a way to make it end at the letter without specifying the lenght like is there some way like char words[lengthofword]; or char words[endatlastletter] without having to specify the length

You could make a dynamically allocated array and resize it if you encounter larger words.

A quick google search of "c dynamic array" will turn up a wealth of knowledge which will help you toward that end.

There is no "easy" way to do that in C.

You either use a constant size (like 10 above; but you can specify a size large enough for all intended purposes; maybe 20000) or dynamic memory (you have to manually manage allocations and deallocations).

If you have a C99 implementation (kinda like anything but Microsoft's Visual Studio) you have another option: use VLA (Variable Length Arrays). They work just like arrays with a constant size except that the size is determined at run time.