Handling mixed character and numeric data.

Formal definition of polynomial for ease of programming.

{<sign><coeff><exponent>}*

<sign> ==> + | -

<coeff> ==> FLOAT

<exponent> ==> x | x^<degree> | []

<degree> ==> INTEGER

Use fscanf ( fid, "%lf", coeff );

Use fscanf ( fid, "%d", exponent );

or fgetc( fid )

Use fgetc (fid)and ungetc (char, fid)to examine characters.

Probably best to copy input stream into an array, removing blanks as you go, and build a pointer to the array. One can then read from the array just like from a file.

Most sophisticated.

January 21, 1999

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JH/TM