how to delete or modify a record in a file?

[danielhf]

I create a file like this:

...
class Student { ... };
ifstream fin ( fname );
fin.write ( (char*)stud, sizeof ( Student );   //save student records
...
ofstream  fout ( fname );
...

i found i can only read the records , or position the file pointer to
a specific record, however, i do not know how to delete a record
from a file, or modify of course .

thanks a lot for help !

[elad]

If you know the position of the file you want to alter in the file then you can overwrite it, and you can append a new record to a file. But beyond that, it's probably best to read the file into your program, make the alteration, and write it back again. If you need to delete an entire record you will need to use some mechanism to indicate you should ignore the material at a given location in the file, or, again, write the entire file to a container in the program, delete the record from the container, shift information within container, if necessary, and then write the entire container back to file.

[twm]

>i do not know how to delete a record from a file, or modify of course
Incentive to keep the entire file in memory. Otherwise you end up using swap files, and that's ugly (or slow...usually both). If your file doesn't fit in memory all at once, your files are too big, you should consider a ban on excessive use of ios::app.