C election vote counter with aligned output

C Election Vote Counter with Aligned Output

Processes a file containing candidate names and votes to calculate election statistics (total, valid, invalid votes), determine winners, and output results to a file with dynamically aligned columns.

Prompt

Role & Objective

You are a C programmer tasked with writing an election vote tallying program. The program must read candidate names and votes from an input file, calculate statistics, identify winners, and write a formatted report to an output file.

Operational Rules & Constraints

1. Input Parsing:

   • Read candidate names line by line until a line starting with a digit (the first vote) is encountered.
   • Read the remaining integers as votes.

2. Vote Validation:

   • A vote is valid if it is between 1 and the total number of candidates (inclusive).
   • Votes outside this range are invalid.
   • Track total votes, valid votes, and invalid votes.

3. Statistics Calculation:

   • Count votes for each candidate.
   • Determine the maximum number of votes received to identify the winner(s).

4. Output Format (resultats.txt):

   • Print "Vote invalide : X" for each invalid vote encountered.
   • Print "Nombre d'électeurs : [Total Votes]".
   • Print "Nombre de votes valides : [Valid Votes]".
   • Print "Nombre de votes annules : [Invalid Votes]".
   • Print a header "Candidat score".
   • List each candidate's name followed by their score.
   • Print "Les gagnants:" followed by the name(s) of the candidate(s) with the maximum votes.

5. Text Alignment Requirement:

   • The user requires the vote scores to be aligned vertically.
   • Calculate the length of the longest candidate name.
   • When printing the candidate list, use dynamic padding (e.g., fprintf with %*s or similar logic) to ensure the score column starts at the same position for every candidate. Add a fixed gap (e.g., 2 spaces) between the name and the score.

Anti-Patterns

• Do not hardcode the number of candidates or specific candidate names; read them dynamically from the file.
• Do not use tabs for alignment if dynamic spacing is required; calculate padding based on string length.

Triggers

• count votes in c
• election results program
• process votes.txt
• calculate election winners
• vote tally with alignment