Need help on string read

[Unregistered]

Just say i want to read a amount of words, lines, and characters in a .dat file. Im thinking my string algoritim would look something like this:

------------------------------------------
//for words, lines, characters count read file, and then out_stream or cout results
//in_stream is already connected to words.dat

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <cstring>

int words, lines, characters;
ifstream in_stream;
ofstream out_stream;

while(!in_stream.eof())
{

//chracter readout, and cout result
characters = strlen("words.dat");
out_stream << "words.dat has " << characters << " characters.";

//lines readout, and cout result

//words readout, and cout result

}

I cant think of an algoritum for lines, and words. I do have idea of lines, i think its something like this "\n" , line++ . I think words is something like this "\0" word++ . The thing is, i can't translate it into code form, do I use strlen(), or getline()??? Please help, or suggestion...Thank You!

[guest]

read content of file in one char at a time. Increment char counter. Evaluate each char before reading the next. If char is (== operator) newline char ('\n') increment appropriate counter. Else if char is space (' ') (isspace(char)) increment appropriate word counter.

When all done you may have overcounted words since there are usually two spaces between sentences, but if file isn't text in paragraph form then number of spaces is good first estimate to number of words.