Better way to delete one line from file

I have a little database I have created for my program's purposes and an option in my program is to remove a line from the database. The database is just a text file with a .dat extension so it is easily extracted with the getline() function. Anyways what I do is just re-read the whole file and exclude the line the user wants to remove. Then I erase the file's contents and rewrite all the lines that I stored into my buffer, the buffer should have all the lines except the excluded one. Then I just recreate my file and fill it with the buffer's contents. This method of doing this seems excessive and unnecessary to me. My question is, are their better more efficient ways of going about this? Thanks.

the way I always do it is:

- using tmpnam(), create a temp file
- write new data to temp file
- rename original file using tmpnam()
- rename temp file to original name
- delete the old file

another reason I like this method is because it reduces the chances of losing data due to unexpected system or program termination.

load all your data into a vector<string>

when they want to remove a line, delete the line from the vector,
and when there done with changes overwrite the file with
the vector. give me a few and ill write some example code.

here that code

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
        int deleterecord;
        vector<string> myfile;
        vector<string>::iterator forward;
        string intext;
        ifstream in("myfile.txt");
        if( in.is_open() )
        {
                while( getline( in, intext, '\n' ) )
                {
                        myfile.push_back( intext );
                }
        }
        in.close();
       
        if( !myfile.empty() )
        {
                cout << "Which record to delete?" << endl;
                int i = 1;
                for(forward = myfile.begin(); forward != myfile.end(); forward++, i++)
                {
                        cout << i << ":\t" << *(forward) << endl;
                }
                cout << endl << endl;
                cout << "Enter a choice?  : ";
                cin >> deleterecord;
                myfile.erase((myfile.begin()+(deleterecord-1)));

                ofstream out("myfile.txt");
                for(forward = myfile.begin(); forward != myfile.end(); forward++)
                {
                        out << *(forward) << endl;
                }
                out.close();
        }
        else
        {
                cout << "Sorry there are nothing in the Vector!" << endl;
        }
        cin.get();
        return 0;
}

---

this is myfile.txt before

Code:

---

this is line1
this is line2
this is line3
this is line4
this is line5
this is line6

---

this is what it looks like after running to program
and choosing option #1

Code:

---

this is line2
this is line3
this is line4
this is line5
this is line6

---

Thanks, ILoveVectors, that way of doing it is way better than mine. I think I'm starting to love vectors... lol.

Quote:

---

have a little database I have created for my program's purposes and an option in my program is to remove a line from the database. The database is just a text file with a .dat extension so it is easily extracted with the getline() function. Anyways what I do is just re-read the whole file and exclude the line the user wants to remove. Then I erase the file's contents and rewrite all the lines that I stored into my buffer, the buffer should have all the lines except the excluded one. Then I just recreate my file and fill it with the buffer's contents. This method of doing this seems excessive and unnecessary to me. My question is, are their better more efficient ways of going about this? Thanks.

---

Yes, there are faster ways. Text files are simpler and code using them is usually more portable, but you could go to using a binary file. Then, instead of physically deleting the tokens, you mark them as deleted. Eventually, and this is iff your file gets really large, you might then collapse the delete lines, but by doing so as a background task, you might avoid having thte user really noticing. Another way to try is using multiple files or using a single large file with some type of index. All these techniques, however, kind of replicate the work of a real database and you'll probably better off using sqlite or any one of the other databases out there.