CS270 Recitation 13: File I/O, parsing, dynamic memory

Goals

• Do some C file I/O
• Use some structs
• Parse some strings
• Do some dynamic memory allocation/freeing

The Assignment

1. Make a subdirectory called R13 for the recitation; all files should reside in this subdirectory.
2. Copy data.txt to the R13 directory. It contains one line per student: Lastname,Firstname,StudentID,GPA,Sex,Class

   	    Smith,James,795534,2.9,M,senior
   	    Johnson,Mary,882417,2.2,F,sophomore

3. Write a program that:
   1. Declares struct Student, which contains the information for a single student.
   2. Opens data.txt
   3. Reads & parses the lines into an array of struct Student.
   4. Closes the data file.
   5. Finds & displays all information, in some reasonable format, about the students with the highest and lowest GPAs.

Notes

• Store the student id as an int.
• Store the GPA as a float.
• Store the sex as a single char.
• You're not allowed to look at the file and hard-code the answers. This program must work no matter what information is in data.txt. For example, the sample data.txt has fifty lines, but you must not count on that in your program.
• You may assume that each line is, at most, 80 characters long.
• There is no limit to the number of lines in the file. Therefore, the array of struct Student must be dynamically allocated via malloc and friends.
• The strings inside a struct Student must be dynamically allocated via malloc and friends.
• All dynamically-allocated memory must be freed at the end.
• If several students have the same high or low GPA, pick one.
• Show your work to the TA to get credit.