Thread: File output, backspacing

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on the search I did.

What i'm doing is simple enough, i'm just outputting some strings to a file, using "outfile<<string1" for example.

My question is, how do I do the equivilent of a backspace? I want to remove the last character in the file, but i'm not sure how.
I've tried using seekp/put to put in the '\b' backspace character, but that didn't work, cause I don't think thats really how i'm supposed to do it.

I'm not posting any code cause I don't think its needed, seeing as this is a pretty basic thing, but if its really needed I will.

Thanks for any suggestions.

You could try something like this -

Code:

#include <fstream>
using namespace std;


int main()
{

	char a[]="Hello,World!";
	ofstream os("bs.txt");
	os << a;
	os.seekp(-1,ios::cur);
	os << '\0';

   return 0;
}

Thanks for trying, but that didn't seem to do it

I can't believe this isn't a simple thing, I just can't think of what to do.

Why didn't it work? What result did you get? Are you trying to open a file that already exists? Do you need to seek to the end of the file before removing the character? Perhaps some code would help.

Never mind, I figured it out.

When I used your code, the problem was it was (for some reason) just putting in a blank space, and moving the last character over.
like:

(before) - ABC
(after) - AB C

But I fixed the problem by using .write, which lets me overwrite the last character.

Thanks though, you pointed me in the right direction with your code