How to Count Characters and Words in a File Using C?

[Yamna]

hi.
please can anyone help me in making a program that opens a file and tell the no. of character and no. of words in the file.
i can write a program to open a file but how can we count characters and words of any file..

 

[DwithQs]

In Pseudo code:

1 - Create int for number of ****characters****
2 - Create int for number of ****words****

1 - Read the File
2 - Process the File character by character in a loop until EOF is reached
3 - Increase counter for ****characters**** with every character read
4 - Compare character you read into a blankspace. If character = blankspace then increase counter for ****words****

Once the while loop hits EOF (end of file) you will have a count of characters (every time the loop runs) and words (every time the read characters equals a blank space).

 

[AlephZero]

4 - Compare character you read into a blankspace. If character = blankspace then increase counter for ****words****

That counts the number of "blankspace" characters, (I suppose you meant "whitespace") not the number of words.

Two words can be separated by more than one whitespace character.

Also the file might contain only whitespace characters, and no "words" at all.

 

[DwithQs]

True, it is nearly limitless on things to check for to get an accurate word count.

 

[Yamna]

i have made a program with this algorithm but its not working properly my code is given below can you help me to remove the errors

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>

void main()
{
	FILE *f;
	char ch;
	int nalpha=0,nword=0,nno=0,nsc=0;
	f=fopen("abc.txt","r");
	if(f!='NULL')
	{
		while(ch=getch(f)!=EOF)
		{
			printf("%c",ch);
			if((ch>='a'&&ch<='z')||(ch>='A'&&ch<='Z'))
				nalpha++;
			else if((ch==' ')||(ch=='.'))
				nword++;
			else if(ch>='0'&&ch<='9')
				nno=nno+1;
			else
				nsc++;

		}
	}
	printf("no.of alphabets is %d",nalpha);
	printf("no.of words is %d",nword);
	printf("no.of numbers is %d",nno);
	printf("no.of other characters is %d",nsc);
	fclose(f);
	getch();
}