My C program to count and print the number of words in a program doesn't work

Divyanshu Bansal 0
Viewed 66

I'm new to C. I was reading Kernigham Ritchie, and came across this example which shoes a code to count the numbers of words in the input. It was quite complex, and I was determined to write a simpler one, but my effort didn't go so well. I can't find an error in my reasoning, so please help.

I am new to C, but I have some experience in Python from my senior year of high school.

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
//Defining the variables
    int c, nw;
    nw=0;
    
//Creating the main loop to traverse the input
    while (!(c=getchar()== EOF)) {
        
       //Creating a condition to check whether a space or a tab has been put.
        if(c==' '||c=='\t') {
            ++nw;
        }
    
        
        else{
            ;
        }
        
    }
    printf("The number of words is ");
    printf("%i", nw);
    return 0;
}

The output is all right, however, it shows number of words as 0.

c
3 Answers

The condition in the while loop looks like

while ( !( c = ( getchar()== EOF ) ) ) {

that is the integer variable c gets the value 0 in case the user enters a valid character. That is the variable c gets the value of the expression getchar()== EOF

It seems you mean

while ( ( c=getchar() ) != EOF ) {

Pay attention to that if the user will enter for example two spaces then the program will count incorrectly the number of words due to this if statement

    if(c==' '||c=='\t') {
        ++nw;
    }

Also the user can press Enter and the input buffer will contain the new line character '\n' that also separates word.

Vlad from Moscow0

You missed "operator precedence" in this code: (c=getchar())!= EOF, means first get the char and then compare with EOF. This should work:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{

    int c, nw;
    nw=0;
    
    while ((c=getchar())!= EOF) 
    {
        
        if(c==' '||c=='\t') 
        {
            ++nw;
        }
        
    }
    
    printf("The number of words is ");
    printf("%i", nw);
    return 0;
}
Rakesh Solanki0

You can try it this way

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
 
void main()
{
    char word[200] = "Keith Tumusiime and everything i need";
    int count = 0, i;
 
    
    for (i = 0;word[i] != '\0';i++)
    {
    //a space is a break point to tell that you are starting a ney word
        if (word[i] == ' ' && word[i+1] != ' ')
            count++;    
    }
    printf("Number of words in given string are: %d\n", count + 1);
}

//Or count wat the user has enterd

printf("Enter the content:\n");
scanf("%[^\n]word", word);
Tumusiime Keith0
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