File input in C++ - S1mple question...

[darknite135]

Hey sorry for making so many threads but I have SO many questions lol. Anyway heres the scoop. When you read from a file, is there any way that you can skip to the next line?

Because your file might be like this:

Hello
Whats up

I've only learned to get EVERYTHING from a file. What if I want to get only a few things?

Heres an example:

Pretend I have a file that stores all my data (not very clever)
It has everything in this order:
-----
My first and last name
Address
Phone number
My E-mail
My best friends phone number
My Library card number
My library pin
My favorite book
My favorite movie
------

So thats the file. How do I write a program that extracts...say...My E-mail, and my favorite movie. Thanks for the help xD

[mikeman118]

I've only learned to get EVERYTHING from a file.

Really? For a while, the only way I knew of was to read in chunks.
Anyway, a quick search in Google for c++ io, second result: a tutorial on Input/Output with files. It would be good if you read it...
Using ifstreams and ofstreams is a lot like cin and cout. If your data just has a single word on each line, you could just do something like:

in/*your ifstream*/ >> myStr/*your string*/;

until you got to the value you wanted, store that value, and then keep going until you find the next value you want. If there are more than one words per line use

getline(in, myStr) // This is all assuming you're using std::strings, which you should

and do the same thing, keeping only the values you want. So basically all you're doing is inputting each line, if it's what you want, keep it. Otherwise, just throw it out (figuratively speaking).

[robwhit]

You could use getline() to read in a line, but then it might not read in all of the line if the the buffer is less than the distance to the newline.

So use this:

char c;
while (cin >> c && c != '\n');

edit: too slow.

[Elysia]

If the std::string buffer is too small for getline when reading a line (which is kinda stupid, since it is a dynamic array), it will set the fail bit in the stream.
So you can check with fail() and it failed, reset the flags suing clear(ios_base::fail) (I believe) just read again with getline and continue doing so until you get an entire row.
If it succeeds, fail() will return false (indicating the fail bit is not set).

[robwhit]

If the std::string buffer is too small for getline when reading a line (which is kinda stupid, since it is a dynamic array)

Yes, it is kind of stupid. I was writing that for C at first, but then I saw that it was the C++ board and converted the post, but left that part because it was possible that the line could be longer than the maximum expansion of the dynamic array, even if that might never actually happen in this program.