Thread: Another problem with ftream

Well here I am asking yet another question, =\
So what I need this time is help getting a string to hold each line of a .txt document. I already wrote something to tell me the number of lines, but now I'm lost as how to go about writing this part of my program. My first thought would be a loop but I don't know. Anyone have any ideas?

I already wrote something to tell me the number of lines,

You don't need to know the number of lines, you just need to keep reading lines until there are no more lines to read. The basic setup for reading from a file is to create a while loop and then use the read statement as the while conditional:

Code:

while(getline(inputFile, myStr) );
{
    //do something with myStr
}

When you get to the end of the file the while loop will terminate. The while loop will also terminate if any errors occur while reading from the file, so you won't end up getting stuck in an infinite loop--which is not the case if you use:

Code:

while(!myFile.eof() )
{
   getline(inputFile, myStr);
   
   //do something with myStr
}

Originally Posted by 7stud

You don't need to know the number of lines, you just need to keep reading lines until there are no more lines to read. The basic setup for reading from a file is to create a while loop and then use the read statement as the while conditional:

Code:

while(getline(inputFile, myStr) );
{
    //do something with myStr
}

Unfortunately that doesn't quite work the way I need it to. I know how to do that, But I need each line to become assigned to a string. I was thinking something maybe like :

Code:

string item1, item2, something;
int x;
void Stock::GetNames(char *file, int lines)
{
     ifstream productlist(file);
     if(productlist.is_open())
     {
     while((getline(productlist, something)) && (x<lines))
         {
                    x++;
                    switch(x)
                    
                         case 1:
                         item1 = something;
                         break;
                          
                         case 2:
                         item2 = something;
                         break;
                         
                         // I don't want to have to add more string variables 
                         //than I absolutely have to.
                         default:
                         cout<<"Error!\n";
                         break;
                                                                                                            
         }
     }
     else
     {
         cout<<"Invalid File\n";
     }
return item1, item2;
}

The problem with this code is that if i were to ever add more "items" to the .txt i would have to recompile the .exe with another item# variable. Is there a way of avoiding a situation like that?

Yes, use either std::vector or std::list.

Code:

std::list<std::string> LineList;
while(std::getline(productlist, something))
    LineList.push_back(something);

Originally Posted by 7stud

Have you ever heard of arrays? Arrays are used to store a group of things, and they are a basic feature of most programming languages.

std::vector is better to use here - because OP does not know the number of lines to be stored (at the beginning) Vector does all the dirty work of the dynamic allocation, not requiring to scan the file twice.

Originally Posted by vart

std::vector is better to use here - because OP does not know the number of lines to be stored (at the beginning) Vector does all the dirty work of the dynamic allocation, not requiring to scan the file twice.

Sometimes baby steps are more appropriate. Not everyone is able to understand Accelerated C++.

Originally Posted by 7stud

Sometimes baby steps are more appropriate. Not everyone is able to understand Accelerated C++.

If somebody starts learning C++ as a first language - he should learn C++.

Learning C just do make learning C++ easier in the future makes no good.

vector replaces arrays as string replaces C-strings. It is simple. Start with the C++ aproach. When you are fluent with it - go back to the low level C-programming to improve your background understanding of what is going on out of the scene.