i/o assigning variables

let's say the following is in a text file

Code:

---

age = 86
favorite number = 1

---

i know i can use a_file.get() and functions like that but what if i want to get those numbers out of the text file and assign it to variables? also, how do i change those numbers in the text file without adding onto it or rewriting the text?

example: i assign the value 86 from the text file to a variable called test. print test to the screen. ask for a new value. change the value of 86 in the text file to new value.

The easy way is with something like this:

Code:

---

struct name_value_pair {
    std::string name;
    int value;
};

ostream & operator << (std::ostream &os, const name_value_pair &p) {
    return os << p.name << " = " << p.value;
}

std::istream & operator >> (std::istream &is, name_value_pair &p) {
    std::string name;
    int value;
    if(std::getline(is,name,'=') >> value) {
        p.name.swap(name); p.value = value;
    }
    return is;
}

---

This lets you use name_value_pairs more or less like you would a simple int. Both operators will work just as well on text files or string streams or whatever decends from istream. Some things you might want to do are define a < operator so that you can have a std::set of name_value_pairs (really just a std::map the hard way). You also may want to make name private and normalize it to make comparisons case insensitive and ignore whitespace. Currently "Age=22" is different from "age = 22". Normalizing is the process of converting something that has many different, but semantically identical forms to one particular form. For example, all lower case with no leading or trailing whitespace.

If you want to change values stored in a file then you need to read the entire file into the program, change the data, and write the entire file contents back to the file, unless you can pinpoint the location of the data to change because the file is set up in a perfectly predicatble fashion. If the file is perfectly predictable you can use fseek() etc to position the file pointer and overwrite the specific value as long as the overwrite takes up the exact amount of memory in the file that the original did.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by elad

If you want to change values stored in a file then you need to read the entire file into the program, change the data, and write the entire file contents back to the file

---

not necessarily... you can rewrite one record at a time, like I do... I open a temporary file, write one record at a time, replacing records that are being updated, and when that's done, copy the temp file into the original and delete the temp file...

major_small can u show me a code example of what u do