On 03/30/2013 19:27, Calvin Morrison wrote:
Is there a better way to read a whole line? fgets requires a length
argument, so I suppose it's not a very good solution
Framing the problem that way is where you went astray.
I'd read the file one character at a time, counting newlines, until I
reached the desired line.
Then I'd continue reading a character at a time, echoing each character
to stdout, until I reached the end of the line. (After which, as Robert
pointed out, there's no reason to continue proocessing the file.)
Doing it this way avoids the need for a buffer altogether, along with
any guessing about possible line lengths.
You were probably thinking that reading a line at a time would be more
efficient. But your intuition is mistaken.
