null and int arrays

Hey everyone

I am brand new to this board and still a novice at c++

Basically I am at my wits end. I am trying to store integers in an array. The source of these integers is a file. Now i get the numbers(from the file) stored in the array but it seems that i doesn't know when the numbers are done in the file. after the last number it just keeps going.

why wont while(Numbers[i]!='/0') work? ( I tried it but to no avail)

Please assist!

It would work if you mark the end of the list with a 0 [and assuming that zero is not a "useful" number in your list].

Of course, if you do something like this:

Code:

---

void readNumbers(istream fin, int arr[])
{
  int i;
  for(i = 0; fin >> arr[i]; i++);
}

---

the content of arr[i] will be undefined at the end of that loop.
The following should work:

Code:

---

void readNumbers(istream fin, int arr[])
{
  int i;
  for(i = 0; fin >> arr[i]; i++);
  arr[i] =0;
}

---

And finally, '\0' and 0 are essentially the same thing, but '\0' is technically a char, so comparing an integer to a char is not "the correct thing to do" in general. Just use zero.

--
Mats

I think you need to show a little code about how you're going about this because what you're trying to explain makes no sense.
You can read from a file until you hit eof (eof bit will be set in the iostream objects), so you know when there's no more data in the file.
I don't know how you're reading into the array either.

Code:

---

while(Numbers[i]!='/0')

---

Is also incredibly wrong. Only C-strings are null terminated, and the null char is \0, not /0. "/0" is, in fact, TWO characters (3 if you count the null char at the end), not one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elysia

Code:

---

while(Numbers[i]!='/0')

---

Is also incredibly wrong. Only C-strings are null terminated, and the null char is \0, not /0. "/0" is, in fact, TWO characters (3 if you count the null char at the end), not one.

---

Ah, good catch, I didn't spot the wrong way slash - although, as it's still got single quotes, it's actually a 'multicharacter constant', so it's value is 0x2F, 0x30 (combined in whatever byte order the target system uses).

--
Mats

As per Elysia's request

Code:

---


#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>

using namespace std;

int main()
{

ifstream in_stream1;

int Numbers[50],i=0;


in_stream1.open("InputFile1.dat");

if (in_stream1.fail())
{
cout<<"Error opening file."<<endl;
exit(1);
}


while((Numbers[i]=!'\0')){
in_stream1>>Numbers[i];
i++;
}

i=0;
while(i<50){
cout<<Numbers[i]<<endl;
i++;
}

in_stream1.close();


return 0;
}

---

The contents of the file is as follow:

3 8 12 15 21 25 31 39 49 63

Certainly, numbers[i] will not be set to '\0' when you reach the end of file - it will just be whatever happens to be on that location.

--
Mats

Just forget about the idea about '\0'.

The easiest way is to a) use a vector if you don't know how large the array must be, and b) rely on the knowledge that if input fails (mostly because of reaching the eof), your ifstream evaluates to false.

Code:

---

ifstream in_stream1("InputFile1.dat");
//error detection

vector<int> Numbers;
int input;
while (in_stream1 >> input) {
    Numbers.push_back(input);
}

---

Waht is the difference between Vectors and Dynamic arrays?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarlonDean

Waht is the difference between Vectors and Dynamic arrays?

---

What I would call "dynamic arrays" is when you manually allocate and/or reallocate memory for an array. Vector does that too, but it's done behind the scenes so you don't need to worry about it.

--
Mats

Thank you everybody!!! it works, it works!!! bwahahahaha