Counting words from input file adding extra word?

Question

I am trying to count uppercase and lowercase letters, the number of digits, and the number of words in an input file. I have completed this, however, my word count is off by one. There are 52 words in the input file, but my count is 53. What would be causing this? All of the others (uppercase, lowercase, and digit) are all correct...

Here's what I have:

using namespace std;

int main()
{
        fstream inFile;
        fstream outFile;
        string fileName("");
        string destName("");
        char c = 0;
        ///////string wrdRev("");/////////
        int numCount = 0;
        int capCount = 0;
        int lowCount = 0;
        int wordCount = 0;

        cout << "Please enter file name: ";
        getline(cin, fileName);
        cout << endl;

        inFile.open(fileName, ios::in);

        if (inFile.good() != true) {
                cout << "File does not exist!\n" << endl;
                return 0;
        }
        else{
                reverse(fileName.begin(), fileName.end());
                destName += fileName;
        }   




 outFile.open(destName, ios::in);

        if (outFile.good() == true){
                cout << "File '" << destName << "' already exists!\n" << endl;
                return 0;
        }   
        else {
                outFile.clear();
                outFile.open(destName, ios::out);


        while(inFile.good() != false){
                inFile.get(c);

                if(isupper(c)){
                        capCount++;
                }
                else if(islower(c)){
                        lowCount++;
                }
                else if(isdigit(c)){
                        numCount++;
                }
                else if(isspace(c)){
                        wordCount++;
                }

        }
                outFile << "There are " << capCount << " uppercase letters." << endl;
                outFile << "There are " << lowCount << " lowercse letters." << endl;
                outFile << "There are " << numCount << " numbers." << endl;
                outFile << "There are " << wordCount << " words." << endl;



        }

        inFile.close();
        outFile.close();

        return 0;


}

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Could you post the string/input file that causes the error? Or does it happen, regardless of input? — LukeG, Feb 10 '16 at 21:06
@LukeG input file contents: This is a test file for hw3 How many Uppercase letters are in this f1le? How many Lowercase letters are in this F1le? H0W mAnY dIg1ts ar3 1N in this FILe? Turn the 1npU7 N4m3 int0 its reverse reverse the Lines to their opp05173 coutnerpart find tOTal NumbEr of characTer5 in File it's just a sample file. The key is that it should count anything within an input file that is entered by the user. — ryanpback, Feb 10 '16 at 21:09

Anton Savin · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-10T21:12:01.177

4

ios::good() returns true after reading the last character in file. So you come to the loop body one extra time. That last time the read fails, the character gets unchanged, and because it's apparently a whitespace character the word count is incremented.

You shouldn't generally use this good(), eof() etc. as a test for end of input. Do this instead:

while (inFile.get(c)) {
    //...
}

edited Feb 10 '16 at 21:12

answered Feb 10 '16 at 21:06

Anton Savin

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That actually worked and gave me the correct number of words. What exactly does the .good() do in that case? is it reading the status bit as a word? – ryanpback Feb 10 '16 at 21:13
You actually answered that question. Still new to the site. Your whole comment wasn't showing because I didn't click on it. Thank you for your response. – ryanpback Feb 10 '16 at 21:15
@Ry23 no problem, see also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5605125/why-is-iostreameof-inside-a-loop-condition-considered-wrong – Anton Savin Feb 10 '16 at 21:16

Counting words from input file adding extra word?

1 Answers1