I think it's with the Heap...but is it...

I have some code that is supposed to dig right into a file and return the text it finds (it's a big file). Unfortunately for me it compiles properly but crashes in the actual program; this is what leads me to beleive the problem is with the heap. My code is below:

Code:

char* file_get(char* fdest)
{
	fstream file(fdest,ios::in);
	
	char* temp = new char;
	*temp = 0;
	if(file.is_open())
		while(!file.eof())
			file.getline(temp, 1000000);
	file.close();
	return temp;
}

int main()
{
        char* temp = file_get(dest);
        cout << temp;
        delete temp;
        return 0;
}

I have included a required headers etc. etc. So what am i doing wrong?

Originally Posted by Meganan

I have some code that is supposed to dig right into a file and return the text it finds (it's a big file). Unfortunately for me it compiles properly but crashes in the actual program; this is what leads me to beleive the problem is with the heap. My code is below:

Code:

char* file_get(char* fdest)
{
	fstream file(fdest,ios::in);
	
	char* temp = new char;
	*temp = 0;
	if(file.is_open())
		while(!file.eof())
			file.getline(temp, 1000000);
	file.close();
	return temp;
}

int main()
{
        char* temp = file_get(dest);
        cout << temp;
        return 0;
}

I have included a required headers etc. etc. So what am i doing wrong?

wow, I think you're right. Everything looks fine, the only thing that caught my attention was getline(temp, 1000000)..try putting a simple 10 there and see if it works, if it doesn't its the heap.

Just as i expected it didn't work. that's because if you say getline(temp, 10) you're never going to reach the eof() are you? You're just going to keep on copying the same 10 char's to the same pointer. I'ts an infinite loop. But this is good because the debugger and now this have told me that the problem resides in returning temp.

Please i still need to solve this there has to be a way to make this work.

It looks pretty broken to me.

Code:

char *temp = new char;

This allocates 1 char, not 1000000. How do you plan on putting 100000 into room for 1 char?
Not to mention your eof check is wrong. Even if you allocated temp correctly you would just rewrite temp each iteration since getline does not append. You also don't ensure that you have enough room allocated for your entire file.
Finally, you never define and give 'dest' a value.

Good points although dest has been declared globally and there is enough room for the entire file. So how would i go about fixing this? i'm new to txt files in C++. Should i declare a string pointer??

You might enjoy the simple examples presented here:
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/tut6-1.html

I've already looked there and it didn't help me or i didn't understand it.

Code:

char* file_get(char* fdest)
{
	fstream file(fdest,ios::in);
	
	char* temp = new char; // You allocated one char and 
below you are trying to put 1000000 chars in there. 
This wont work. 
	*temp = 0;
	if(file.is_open())
// if this is the same with C. this line has some issues. Read on the FAQ section about feof()
		while(!file.eof())
			file.getline(temp, 1000000); // I dont think this will work even if you allocte 10000000 chars in memory its just too big. 
	file.close();
	return temp;
}

// Evrything is fine here/
int main()
{
        char* temp = file_get(dest);
        cout << temp;         
        delete temp;
        return 0;
}

...
...
...

So cry about it. Come on show us some effort. How could it not help you and why are you not asking relavent questions if it didn't. Here's the exact program for what your's intended, straight from the site:

Code:

// reading binary file
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

const char * filename = "example.txt";

int main () {
	char * buffer;
	long size;

	ifstream file (filename, 
		ios::in | 
		ios::binary | 
		ios::ate);

	// ios::ate is end-of-file pointer
	// so tellg will now give yield size
	size = file.tellg();
	file.seekg(0, ios::beg);

	// dynamically allocate space
	// on the "heap" if you will
	buffer = new char [size];

	// read() the file into your buffer
	file.read (buffer, size);

	// clean ........ up
	file.close();
	delete[] buffer;
	return 0;
}

really give me a minute...oohhh wait no the important part is that it is placed inside a function. I got it to work myself when it was just in the main(). Mabye i'll try to see if i can convert that into a function...i've done after just a few minutes of work. thankyou all i can't beleive i was so blind.