Thread: question about reading files

If I number everything in a .txt file how would I get the computer to read a character string after a certain number?
e.g
"Text file.txt"
200 james
201 darren
202 john

How do I get the computer to run thorugh the text file, find 201 and then read in 'darren'.

James

The easiest way is when you creat your outfile, just have the number printed on the line directly above the name.
Ex:

//...
ofstream outfile;
outfile.open("textfile.txt");
outfile << "200" << '\n'; //or substitute 200 with your variable
outfile << "John" << '\n'; //same as above
outfile.close();
//...

Then, when loading the file, you would do:

//...
int num;
char name;
ifstream infile;
infile.open("textfile.txt");
infile >> num; //gets 200 or the number into variable num
infile >> name; //gets John or the name into variable name
infile.close();
//...

You could loop that or whatever if you are using arrays, but that is the easiest way to do it.

Oops, I didn't answer your second question.

You would need to create a loop that searched the entire file until it found it. You would need an if statement something like the following:

//...
int num;
int done = 0;
char name;
ifstream infile;
infile.open("textfile.txt");
while((done = 0)||(!infile.eof())) { /*repeats until the end of the file is reached or it finds the correct number */
infile >> num;
infile >> name;
if(num == 201) {
done++;
}
}
infile.close();
//...

Variable name is now containing the name you were searching for, and variable num contains the number at which it was found.

thanks for that