Get Next Line

💡 About

A C function that reads a line from a file descriptor, making file reading operations more convenient.

This project implements a function that reads text from a file descriptor line by line. It's particularly useful for parsing files, handling input streams, and processing text data sequentially. The project introduces the concept of static variables in C and teaches efficient memory management.

🛠️ Usage

Requirements

• GCC compiler
• C Language
• Make

Instructions

1. Compiling

$ git clone https://github.com/Wdaoudi/get_next_line
$ cd get_next_line
$ cc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -D BUFFER_SIZE=42 get_next_line.c get_next_line_utils.c

2. Using it

#include "get_next_line.h"

int main()
{
    int fd = open("example.txt", O_RDONLY);
    char *line;
    
    while ((line = get_next_line(fd)))
    {
        printf("%s", line);
        free(line);
    }
    close(fd);
    return (0);
}

📋 Features

Feature	Description
Line Reading	Reads text line by line from a file descriptor
Memory Management	Efficient memory allocation and deallocation
Static Variables	Uses static variables to maintain state between function calls
Buffer Size Control	Customizable buffer size via compilation flag
Error Handling	Robust error checking and handling

📊 Testing

# Compile with different buffer sizes
cc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -D BUFFER_SIZE=1 *.c
cc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -D BUFFER_SIZE=42 *.c
cc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -D BUFFER_SIZE=10000000 *.c

Example usage:

int fd1 = open("test1.txt", O_RDONLY);
int fd2 = open("test2.txt", O_RDONLY);

char *line1 = get_next_line(fd1); // Read from first file
char *line2 = get_next_line(fd2); // Read from second file

💫 Bonus Features

• Handles multiple file descriptors simultaneously
• Manages file descriptors from 0 to 1024
• Uses only one static variable
• Complete memory leak-free implementation

The bonus part includes additional files:

• get_next_line_bonus.c
• get_next_line_bonus.h
• get_next_line_utils_bonus.c