convert tabs to spaces

[jmprince01]

my assignment is to convert tabs to spaces (8) in C. we are supposed to use getchar() and not expand(). can someone get me started? it should be REALLY simple so i can grasp it!
Thanks
jp

[Banfa]

you will need to provide more detail because what you have given is not enough. Also since this is a course work assignment our general rule is that you have to post an attempt at solving the problem first and then we will help you with any problems you are having with it.

[jmprince01]

the assignment is as follows: write a c program that will read from stdin (using getchar()) and replace tabs by the number of blanks that will achieve the same spacing. (8 spaces in a tab)


here is my code, what i came up with:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
char ch, tab;
int c;

while((c=getchar())!=EOF){
tab=" "; //tab = 8 spaces
puts(tab);
} //end of while loop

printf("\ta\n"); //wherever there is a \t, it should print 8spaces
printf("\t\ta\n");


return (0);
} // end of main

[jmprince01]

i am posting again hopefully some one can help?

the assignment is as follows: write a c program that will read from stdin (using getchar()) and replace tabs by the number of blanks that will achieve the same spacing. (8 spaces in a tab)


here is my code, what i came up with:

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main(void)
{
char ch, tab;
int c;
 
while((c=getchar())!=EOF){
tab=" "; //tab = 8 spaces
puts(tab);
} //end of while loop
 
printf("\ta\n"); //wherever there is a \t, it should print 8spaces
printf("\t\ta\n");
 
 
return (0);
} // end of main
 

[Banfa]

Sorry about the delay the email notification of posts on this site is not currently working correctly.

OK a couple of tips

puts adds a newline so is going to mess up the output by adding newlines where they are not required.

your code will not change the output of the printf statements, if you explicitly write a tab then a tab is what you will get.

I think you will find that the easiest way to solve this problem is to consider what should be output for a given input

Assume that the input is

Hello<tab>World !

Your program needs to read and output the 5 leters of Hello. The next character it reads will be a tab character, tab stops occur at every 8 characters, since we have already output 5 characters (of hello) we need to output 3 spaces to take us up to the next tab stop before we carry on reading data.

Your tab variable is miss used, it is of type char but you try to assign a string to it (which you couldn't do in C/C++ even if it was of type array of char) andpass it to a function expecting const char * (pointer to an array of characters containing azero terminate string).