C Exercises: Find the content of the file and number of lines in a Text File

Last update on August 08 2025 12:53:15 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

6. File Content & Line Count

Write a program in C to find the content of a file and the number of lines in a text file.

Sample Solution:

C Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define LSIZ 128 
#define RSIZ 10 

int main(void) 
{
    char line[RSIZ][LSIZ];
	char fname[20];
    FILE *fptr = NULL; 
    int i = 0;
    int tot = 0;
    printf("\n\n Find the content of the file and number of lines in a Text File :\n");
	printf("----------------------------------------------------------------------\n"); 
	printf(" Input the file name to be opened : ");
	scanf("%s",fname);	

    fptr = fopen(fname, "r");
/*--------------------- store the lines into an array ----------------*/	
    while(fgets(line[i], LSIZ, fptr)) 
	{
        line[i][strlen(line[i]) - 1] = '\0';
        i++;
    }
    tot = i;
	printf("\n The content of the file %s  are : \n",fname);    
    for(i = 0; i < tot; ++i)
    {
        printf(" %s\n", line[i]);
    }
/*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/	
    printf("\n The lines in the file are : %d\n",tot-1);
    printf("\n");
	
    return 0;
}

Sample Output:

 Find the content of the file and number of lines in a Text File :                                            
----------------------------------------------------------------------                                        
 Input the file name to be opened : test.txt                                                                  
                                                                                                              
 The content of the file test.txt  are :                                                                      
                                                                                                              
 test line 1                                                                                                  
 test line 2                                                                                                  
 test line 3                                                                                                  
 test line 4                                                                                                  
                                                                                                              
 The lines in the file are : 4

Flowchart:

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a C program to read a file, display its content, and then append the total line count at the end of the file.
Write a C program to read a file into memory, display each line, and then print the total number of lines and words.
Write a C program to simultaneously display file content and compute statistics like line and character count.
Write a C program to print the file content and then write the computed line count to a separate log file.

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