Help with a goto loop

I want a program that searches for specific infromation on a col through a whole file, by each col. I thought like this but I'm pretty sure of that there's some better code for it:

int main()
{

char text[20];
cin.getline(text, 20, '\n');

std::ofstream tfile("test.dat") /* I don't know how to make it search through the actual file */

while (strcmp(text, "here is the col I search for"))
{
std::cout << "*going to the next col*";
}

When it hits the actual col, the while loop will stop. Then I also would like to put the actual col in a variable.

Please help me so that it can search through the file and also
the "going to next col" code, and finally putting the information on the matching col in a variable. Rewrite the whole code if it's
so inefficient that you find it neccesary.

>Rewrite the whole code if it's so inefficient that you find it neccesary

What code?

What's the format of test.dat? Does each column contain separated strings (do they contain whitespace)? What's the column delimeter? How many columns are there?

int main()
{

char text[20];
cin.getline(text, 20, '\n');

std::ofstream tfile("test.dat") /* I don't know how to make it search through the actual file */

while (strcmp(text, "here is the col I search for"))
{
std::cout << "*going to the next col*";
}

Sorry, it must of been in my blind spot, I'd go with that if I were you; it looks fine.

That's all.

As there's no magic functions in C++ to detect the format of a file, you're going to have to provide more info (see questions in my original post).

Ok, I just want to create a program that searches through a file for a col that holds specific information, and then store that specific information in a variable.

assume that we have a file looking like this:

trings
intrgs
stnrgi
rtgins
string
trgnis
nstgir

assume that I want to search for the col which holds the information "string". When the program has found the information "string", I also want that information to be stored in a variable which we can call x.

In your code you'll have to place another cin.getline() in the while loop, to read the next line. Everytime it doesn't find the string it'll then read another line.