Replacing spaces with tabs. Exercise 1-21 in "The C Programming Language"

Question

I'm looking for feedback on the code I came up with for exercise 1-21 in "The C Programming Language" by K&R.

Write a program entab that replaces strings of blanks with the minimum number of tabs and blanks to achieve the same spacing. Use the same stops as for detab . When either a tab or a single blank would suffice to reach a tab stop, which should be given preference?

The feedback I would mainly like is on readability, conventions and general good (or bad) practices.

This was a fun problem to solve and I think I came up with a efficient solution.

#include <stdio.h>
#define TABSIZE 8
#define MAXLENGTH 80
void entab(char s[]);
int _getline(char s[], int lim);
int main()
{
 int len;
 char line[MAXLENGTH];
 while ((len = _getline(line, MAXLENGTH)) > 0)
 entab(line);
}
void entab(char s[])
{
 int i, c, nb;
 nb = 0;
 for (i = 0; (c = s[i]) != '0円'; ++i)
 {
 if (c == ' ')
 {
 if (++nb > 1)
 {
 if (i + 1 % TABSIZE == 0)
 {
 putchar('\t');
 nb = 0;
 }
 }
 }
 else
 {
 if (nb > 0)
 {
 for (; nb > 0; --nb)
 putchar('x');
 }
 putchar(c);
 }
 }
}
int _getline(char s[], int lim)
{
 int c, i;
 for (i = 0; i < lim - 1 && (c = getchar()) != EOF && c != '\n'; i++)
 s[i] = c;
 if (c == '\n')
 {
 s[i] = c;
 ++i;
 }
 s[i] = '0円';
 return i;
}

The function _getline() was given by the book. Only practices encountered in the book up until this assignment are used, I have not yet read about things like pointers and other more advanced features

---

My own thoughts

• Use (more) comments when coding
• Use more "self-explaining" variable names
• Input longer than 80 characters isn't handled correctly

• Toby Speight: Just in case you don't know - never begin your own identifiers with an underscore like that. Standard C reserves those names for the implementation's own use, so you may get a collision. I'll let you off since K&R gave that to you (the book pre-dates the standardisation of the language, so it wasn't as certainly an issue back when it was written).
• Ghxst: @TobySpeight This is definitely my own fault! The book gave the function with the name "getline" however I ran into issues because I think the stdio library also contains a function with that name. Coming from python I thought it was a good idea to use an underscore. I will avoid doing so from now on, thank you for the feedback!

Answer 1

Welcome to Code Review! I'm always glad to see someone who reads the classics.

You made some interesting observations about the program.

The statement Use more "self-explaining" variable names is absolutely correct: the variable name nb could definitely be improved. I would like to point out that self-documenting might be better than self-explaining.

If the variable and symbolic constant names are improved it may not need any additional comments.

The header file <stdio.h> includes a symbolic constant BUFSIZ that might be a better length than 80. In some cases BUFSIZ may be the maximum line length for the system; this was true on older Unix systems.

Possible Bug

This code seems out of scope for the problem as it is defined, I would expect to see that it was outputing blanks.

 for (; blankCount > 0; --blankCount)
 putchar('x');

A Good Coding Practice

Code needs to be maintained. This may include adding additional lines to control structures such as if statements and loops. In C and C++ a good programming practice is to have code blocks (complex statements) in all if, else and loop statements even if it isn't currently necessary.

if (CONDITION)
{
 one statement
}
else
{
 one statement
}
while (CONDITION)
{
 one statement
}

Alternate Solution with Simplified Functions

It might be easier to read, write and modify entab() if it called a function to count all the blanks and print the necessary tabs and blanks. Programming in many cases is breaking down a problem into smaller and smaller pieces until each piece is easy to implement. While this may make the entire program a little more complex, each function is simplified.

This example uses a concept you haven't gotten to in the book yet called pointers.

void print_tabs_or_spaces(int tab_count, int out_value)
{
 for (int i = 0; i < tab_count; i++)
 {
 putchar(out_value);
 }
}
char* count_blanks_and_output_tabs_and_spaces(char *c)
{
 int blank_count = 0;
 while (*c == ' ')
 {
 ++blank_count;
 c++;
 }
 int tab_count = blank_count / TABSIZE;
 int space_count = blank_count % TABSIZE;
 print_tabs_or_spaces(tab_count, '\t');
 print_tabs_or_spaces(space_count, ' ');
 return c;
}
void entab(char str[])
{
 char *c = &str[0]; 
 while(*c != '0円')
 {
 if (*c == ' ')
 {
 c = count_blanks_and_output_tabs_and_spaces(c);
 }
 else
 {
 putchar(*c);
 c++;
 }
 }
}

• Ghxst: Thank you very much for your observations and feedback! The reason for this loop is because when the global loop starts, we aren't sure yet whether the spaces / blanks we encounter should be tabs, in a case where multiple spaces / blanks are used, but not until the nearest tab stop, a tab shouldn't be used. example: "hello world" (2 spaces) will be printed as "helloxxworld" where as hello world (3 spaces) will be printed as "hello\tworld". I did however forget to change the 'x' to a ' ' (space).
• pacmaninbw: @Ghxst I wasn't questioning why the loop was there, just the x. :)