Thread: Better way to delete one line from file

I have a little database I have created for my program's purposes and an option in my program is to remove a line from the database. The database is just a text file with a .dat extension so it is easily extracted with the getline() function. Anyways what I do is just re-read the whole file and exclude the line the user wants to remove. Then I erase the file's contents and rewrite all the lines that I stored into my buffer, the buffer should have all the lines except the excluded one. Then I just recreate my file and fill it with the buffer's contents. This method of doing this seems excessive and unnecessary to me. My question is, are their better more efficient ways of going about this? Thanks.

load all your data into a vector<string>

when they want to remove a line, delete the line from the vector,
and when there done with changes overwrite the file with
the vector. give me a few and ill write some example code.

here that code

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
	int deleterecord;
	vector<string> myfile;
	vector<string>::iterator forward;
	string intext;
	ifstream in("myfile.txt");
	if( in.is_open() )
	{
		while( getline( in, intext, '\n' ) )
		{
			myfile.push_back( intext );
		}
	}
	in.close();
	
	if( !myfile.empty() )
	{
		cout << "Which record to delete?" << endl;
		int i = 1;
		for(forward = myfile.begin(); forward != myfile.end(); forward++, i++)
		{
			cout << i << ":\t" << *(forward) << endl;
		}
		cout << endl << endl;
		cout << "Enter a choice?  : ";
		cin >> deleterecord;
		myfile.erase((myfile.begin()+(deleterecord-1)));

		ofstream out("myfile.txt");
		for(forward = myfile.begin(); forward != myfile.end(); forward++)
		{
			out << *(forward) << endl;
		}
		out.close();
	}
	else
	{
		cout << "Sorry there are nothing in the Vector!" << endl;
	}
	cin.get();
	return 0;
}

this is myfile.txt before

Code:

this is line1
this is line2
this is line3
this is line4
this is line5
this is line6

this is what it looks like after running to program
and choosing option #1

Code:

this is line2
this is line3
this is line4
this is line5
this is line6

Thanks, ILoveVectors, that way of doing it is way better than mine. I think I'm starting to love vectors... lol.