Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Code Reviews

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Comments on Counting number of assignments that a `fscanf` format strings implies

Post

Counting number of assignments that a `fscanf` format strings implies

+4
−0

I'm writing a function that counts the number of assignments for a fscanf format string. I studied the documentation in C standard 7.21.6.2

It looks like it works. It passes all test cases I have written and yields no warnings with -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -std=c17. While I appreciate design advises, my main concern is if the code is correct or not, so I would be grateful if you found any test case that breaks it. Minor things like variable naming and such is not really interesting.

The function requires the format string to be valid. If not, the behavior is undefined.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <assert.h>

// Counts the number of assignments that should be made by scanf and alike.
//
// Assumes a valid format string. If it's not valid, behavior is undefined.

int count_assignments(const char *fmt) {
    int ret = 0;

    // Note that n is removed, because it suppresses assignments
    static const char specifiers[] = "diouxaefgcspAEFGX";
    static const char singlelength[] = "hljztL";
    static const char doublelength[] = "hl";

    while(*fmt) {
        if(*fmt == '%') { 
            fmt++;

            // Skip width modification
            while(isdigit(*fmt)) fmt++;

            // Check length modification
            if(strchr(singlelength, *fmt)) {
                fmt++;
                if(strchr(doublelength, *fmt)) {
                    fmt++;
                    goto READ_SPECIFIER;
                }
                goto READ_SPECIFIER;
            }
            if(*fmt == '[') {
                while(*fmt != ']') fmt++;
                ret++;
                goto END;
            }
            goto READ_SPECIFIER;
        }

        goto END;
        
    READ_SPECIFIER:
        if(strchr(specifiers, *fmt)) 
            ret++;
    END:
        fmt++;
    }

    return ret;
}

int main(void)
{
    struct test_case {
        const char *fmt;
        const int n;
    } test_cases[] = {
        { "foo", 0 },
        { "%s", 1 },
        { "%d%d", 2 },
        { "%lld", 1 },
        { "%%", 0 },
        { "%d%%%d", 2 },
        { "%2333d%c%33f", 3 },
        { "%[bar]", 1 }
    };

    for(size_t i=0; i<sizeof test_cases/sizeof test_cases[0]; i++) {
        struct test_case tc = test_cases[i];
        printf("%s %d %d\n", tc.fmt, tc.n, count_assignments(tc.fmt));
        assert(count_assignments(tc.fmt) == tc.n);
    }
}
History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

2 comment threads

Handling `%%` in a `scanf()` format string? (1 comment)
General comments (2 comments)
Handling `%%` in a `scanf()` format string?
Mythical Programmer‭ wrote about 2 years ago

Does the code handle %%, which means a single % in the input? The POSIX specification for scanf() also provides some options your code does not consider — conversion specifiers S and C, the modifier m, and the %n$… notation which specifies which argument should be converted (so scanf("%2$d %1$d", &x, &y) assigns the first integer to y and the second to x). You can legitimately decide that the POSIX extras are not within remit.