Thread: using (importing and saving) csv files

Hey all, for my next (and last, about time) assignment, my professor is asking us to try and use/manipulate csv files (specifically to import, manipulate, and finally save). This is the first time in the semester that we're playing around with them, and I'm not a bit clueless as to where to begin. Would it be similar to opening and closing regular files? If I already wrote something like this:

Code:

if (argc != 3) //if there are an incorrect number of arguments
	{
		cerr 	<< "\n\tIncorrect usage.\n"
		<< "\tCorrect syntax: " << argv[0] << " inputFile outPutFile\n\n";
		exit(1);
	}
	
	ifstream fin;
	ofstream fout;
	
	fin.open (argv[1]); //opens input file from command line
	
	if (fin.fail()) //if file cannot open
	{
		cerr << "Could not open " <<argv[1] << endl;
		exit(1);
	}
	
	fout.open (argv[2]);
	
	if (fout.fail()) //if file cannot open
	{
		cerr << "Could not open " <<argv[2] << endl;
		exit(1);
	}
//main program, using fin and fout

        fin.close();
	fout.close();

Would this be able to provide a template for using csv files? Or do I need to learn new syntax? Thanks in advance for your troubles!

Sorry. Yea, Comma Separate Values. I'm a bit new, so do you mean that whenever I need to read in data, I would use find(), and then whenever I need to modify, I would use substr()? And finally, how would I save the data into a new file (create a new entry/whatever)? Thanks again for any and all help

O_o

Within C++, using `std::string', the `strtok' or `strpbrk' functions don't directly exist, but `strcspn' is basically spelled `std::string::find_first_of'.

Parsing a regular old "CSV" file is, largely, is easy as using `std::getline', `std::string::find_first_of', and `std::string::substr' in a nice little dance.

See what you can figure out with those functions.

Parsing the variation that uses escape characters and allows quoted strings with the nested non-consecutive separators is a little more difficult, but you don't have to go there unless you need to.

Soma

An easy way of extracting variables from a CSV file is to use getline(stream, std::string, delimiter) in a loop. Then convert the extracted string to the proper type of variable with the stringstream class.

Jim