C++ fscanf equivalent?

Is there an equivalent to fscanf in c++?
I need to read a float from an ifstream. In C, it would be something like the following:

Code:

---

fscanf(file, "%f", &dist);

---

In C++, I could use >> maybe. But is there a safer way of doing this? The way I would think of doing it in C++ is:

Code:

---

float dist;
ifstream file;
...
...
file >> dist;

---

Is there a better way than this? Or is this pretty standard?
Thanks
Mark

Well fscanf isn't the best way to do it in C either - although I have
my suspicions that >> operator for your filestream is better than
fscanf. The ideal way to read from a file that contains a lot
of information is to read in line by line (using getline for C++) and
parse the data you need. thats why files typically have a
repetitive stucture if they need to be processed by a program

I believe that is what you are looking to use.

C gurus recommend fgets() + sscanf() for files. Similiarly, for C++, you could use getline() and stringstream.

there's always getline()

EDIT: just saw jafet's post

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by markucd

Is there an equivalent to fscanf in c++?
I need to read a float from an ifstream. In C, it would be something like the following:

Code:

---

fscanf(file, "%f", &dist);

---

In C++, I could use >> maybe. But is there a safer way of doing this? The way I would think of doing it in C++ is:

Code:

---

float dist;
ifstream file;
...
...
file >> dist;

---

Is there a better way than this? Or is this pretty standard?
Thanks
Mark

---

using the >> operator is actually quite safe - the stream will fail if there is a problem with the data (eg, attempting to input an ASCII char into a double) - the real challenge is handling exceptions which occur when something does go wrong. eg,

Code:

---

if (!(file >> dist))
{
  //Something happened reading from 'file'
  std::cout << "Error!" << std::endl;
  exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
// OK - data from 'file' was successfully read into 'dist'

---