File I/O specifics

Can anyone tell me all about file i/o with fstream?I used to know this but forgot.I need to know particulars,for example and especialy:
how would you write at the end of an already eisting file.Also how would you read a date out of a string,e.x.:

Database accessed at 5:51p 5/15/88 by John smith
Database accessed at 3:00p 6/12/88 by John smith
Database accessed at 7:00p 6/13/88 by Jane Shelton
Database accessed at 2:15p 6/14/88 by John smith
.
.
.
.
.
Database accessed at 5:20p 8/18/02 by Marcy Peyng
Database accessed at 12:00p 8/19/02 by Jennifer Lane
Database accessed at 1:00p 8/28/02 by John smith

now how would you read the date that the Database was LAST accessed BY Jennifer Lane?

I would start with:
http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html

I believe lesson 10 is what you want.

yes,I've read that,but im not sure how to use ios append,does it just simply write what you tell it to at the end of the file?And I still need to know how to read as I explained.

Does C++ support SQL? If so, a query would be your answer, something like

PHP Code:

---

SELECT MAX(Date) FROM MyDB WHERE name = 'Jennifer Lane' 


---

I know it can be done in VB, hard to believe can't be done in C++, although never actually seen it.

there are a variety of ios:: flags that can be used with ostreams. They are most often indicated in the declaration of the stream. If not declared otherwise the ios::trunc flag is the default. To append to the end of a file named data.txt which is located in the same subdirectory as the exe. of the program you are using you can do something like this:

ofstream fout(ios::app);
fout.open("data.txt");

To extract the data fields from the entire line you need to parse the line. The process to do this depends somewhat on whether the data is stored in a reproduceable or a random format. The example provided seems regular. Therefore you could call the >> operator three times and ignore the input. Then call the >> a fourth time to extract the 5:51p from the example below. Using the >> operator a fifth time will extract the 5/15/88 from below. Calling >> three more times will get you to the next line where you can do it all over again.

Database accessed at 5:51p 5/15/88 by John smith

once you have isolated the given fields you can further parse them into month, day, year, convert to military time or whatever you want to do with them.