Random picks

Hi,
I am looking for some code that will pick a random name from a text file of names and dislplay the name on the screen. This seems easy enough logically, however, I'm not a programer. Is there someplace or somebody that can direct me to either learn how this is done or a place that has sample code for this?

Thanks for any information!
MCorn

There are many ways to do this. Probably the most straightforward way is to read all the names from the file into an array or vector in your program. Then pick a random number that is less than the size of the array/vector. Use that random number as the index of an element of the array/vector to access it/display it to the screen/whatever.

Originally Posted by elad

There are many ways to do this. Probably the most straightforward way is to read all the names from the file into an array or vector in your program. Then pick a random number that is less than the size of the array/vector. Use that random number as the index of an element of the array/vector to access it/display it to the screen/whatever.

as a bit of an optimization here, you could generate the random number first if you know how many names there are, then just read up to the nth name and ignore the rest. This of course rely's on knowing the number of names before hand.

Code:

#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>
#include<string>
#include<ctime>
#include<cstdio>
int main()
{
fstream readfile;
int num=0,max=0;
char a;
string b;
readfile.open("test.txt",fstream::in);
srand((unsigned int)time(0));
while(readfile>>b)
{
max++;
}
readfile.close();
cout<<"press 1 to show name,else to exit"<<endl;
cin>>a;
while(a='1')
{
readfile.open("test.txt",fstream::in);
num=rand()%max;
while(num>=0)
{
readfile>>(b);
num--;
}
cout<<b<<endl;
cout<<"press 1 to show name,else to exit"<<endl;
cin>>a;
cin.ignore();
readfile.close();
}
return 0;
}

it needs you to write one name per line in .txt file

i write this in hurry, i believe there is some better way....