The function read_data() accepts as input an input-file stream ins and a character delimiter.

When called, the function read_data() reads all bytes in ins from the location of ins's file pointer up to and including the first occurrence of the character delimiter. If delimiter doesn't occur in ins, read_data() reads up to the end-of-file.

read_data() returns a pointer to a block of memory containing all the bytes read from ins and an integer giving the number of bytes in the block.

Design an algorithm to implement the read_data() function. You algorithm should handle arbitrary amounts of data, handle all stream input errors, and use memory efficiently ("efficiently" means that reading 10 bytes should take significantly (orders of magnitude) less memory overall than reading one million bytes).

This page last modified on 14 August 2001.