Thread: File stream loop

Why does my loop loops 3 times when i have only 2 line of data in my file? From the cout << s.size , when i run it will show 1,2,3.

Information in txt file

Code:

local john 10/2/1990
international tom 2/5/2000

output

Code:

local john 10/2/1990
international tom 2/5/2000
international tom 2/5/2000

Code:

ifstream in(filename);
while()
{
    if (in.eof())
    break;
    if(in)
    {
        in >> nationality;
        in >> name;
        in >> DOB;
        clsStudent student(nationality, name, DOB);
        s.push_back(student);
    } 
    else
        cerr << "\nCannot open " << filename << " for reading" << endl;
        cout << s.size();
}

It looks like you have a syntax error, so I doubt your loop loops at all.

You should try looping based on the success of the input(read) operation:

Code:

ifstream in(filename);
while(in >> nationality >> name >> DOB )
{
    // Do stuff with what you've successfully read
}

EOF is not set until AFTER you've attempted to read past the end of the file, not at the point where you've read up to the end of file. The reason you see 3 lines is that after the last line is read the first time, you go back into the while loop. The eof test at this stage will still return false and you will not break out of the loop like you think your program should be doing. Then, your program tries to do the three stream extraction (read) operation statements, these will of course all fail and EOF will be set but the problem is you are already in your processing loop so it is too late to do anything. Since the read operation has failed, the values in the variables from the previous (successful) read operation are still present and you print out the contents one more time.