Search text in file

Ok, i started a new project. Basically its like the find function in Word. I want to open a text file and search for an occurence of a word. any tips? should the file first be read into a vector and then search the vector for the word? any hints will really be appreciated...

The simplest (but not the most effiicent) is to perform the search by reading one char at a time from the file, if it's matching, remember the position, otherwise keep reading.

The complication comes with words that have repeated substrings, where you go past the beginning of the actual word when mismatching with a previous word, e.g. Searching for "abcab", and we find:
ababcab
The search will then consume ab, not match with c, but we have already read the a for "abcab". [There are longer examples where you read past more than one character].

This is pretty obscure, but if ou want to be complete, you need to "go back" to where you started matching before you search again.

--
Mats

You could take a look at this page on the Boyer-Moore fast string matching algorithm, as well as the links to other string matching algorithms.

Code:

---

while (in_stream>> input )
{
    text.push_back(input);
   
}

---

Will this read charcater for charcater or word for word?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarlonDean

Code:

---

while (in_stream>> input )
{
    text.push_back(input);
   
}

---

Will this read charcater for charcater or word for word?

---

depends on what "input" is declared as, but if it's a char, yes.

--
Mats

Code:

---


vector<char> text;



while (in_stream>> input )
{
    text.push_back(input);
   
}

cout<<text.size()<<endl;

for (counter=0;counter<text.size();counter++)
{
    cout<<text[counter]<<" ";
}   



return 0;
}

---

Ok this is the backbone so far. I tell it to read from a file containing random words. but text.size() remains zero. for some reason the text is not being read into the vector. any suggestions?

PS: I tested it for a text file containing numbers, works well...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarlonDean

Code:

---


vector<char> text;



while (in_stream>> input )
{
    text.push_back(input);
   
}

cout<<text.size()<<endl;

for (counter=0;counter<text.size();counter++)
{
    cout<<text[counter]<<" ";
}   



return 0;
}

---

Ok this is the backbone so far. I tell it to read from a file containing random words. but text.size() remains zero. for some reason the text is not being read into the vector. any suggestions?

PS: I tested it for a text file containing numbers, works well...

---

Right, so what type is the variable "input"?

--
Mats

May-be the file wasn't opened successfully?

Or may-be you forgot to change the type of input to char?

By the way, it seems that in_stream >> would strip away all whitespace characters. If you want to preserve them, you might try in_stream.get(input).

Edit: or apply the noskipws format flag to in_stream first.

By the way, you can also construct the vector from the input stream in the first place: :)

Code:

---

#include <iterator> //for istreambuf_iterator

    ifstream fin("input.txt");
    fin >> noskipws;
    vector<char> v((istreambuf_iterator<char>(fin)), istreambuf_iterator<char>());
  //v now contains all the characters in "input.txt"

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yes, yes! I declared input as type int instead of type char. and now it works much better, as exactly like anon predictated it throws away all my whitespace characters. now, because i want the end program to search for words, whitespaces are crucial. I still green to c++. Why does it do it? doesnt a space count as a character?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarlonDean

yes, yes! I declared input as type int instead of type char. and now it works much better, as exactly like anon predictated it throws away all my whitespace characters. now, because i want the end program to search for words, whitespaces are crucial. I still green to c++. Why does it do it? doesnt a space count as a character?

---

It does, but to many applications, skipping whitespace is exactly what you want to avoid having to write code to skip it within the applications that use the input. As described in anon's post, you can easily apply the "noskipws" to your input stream, so it's no big deal.

--
Mats

Ok fantastic! I used the following and it captures the file exactly correct

Code:

---

while (in_stream>>noskipws>> input )
{
    text.push_back(input);
   
}

---

now for the search function...