I have an assignment for coding a Huffman algorithm. I have the whole problem organized in my head, but I'm having some trouble with file handling.
The problem is: the algorithm is supposed to compress ANY kind of file.
My solution: read the file as a byte array, then with an int array[256]={0} for each byte, get it's int n corresponding value and increment the array[n]. If I didn't make it clear, let me know.
So, I've done lots of researching, but don't understand how to get bytes from ANY kind of file and how to handle them.
FILE *fileptr;
char *buffer;
long filelen;
fileptr = fopen("myfile.txt", "rb"); // Open the file in binary mode
fseek(fileptr, 0, SEEK_END); // Jump to the end of the file
filelen = ftell(fileptr); // Get the current byte offset in the file
rewind(fileptr); // Jump back to the beginning of the file
buffer = (char *)malloc(filelen * sizeof(char)); // Enough memory for the file
fread(buffer, 1, filelen, fileptr); // Read in the entire file
fclose(fileptr); // Close the file
Now you have an array of bytes containing the file's contents.