Reading from file without using string - c++

I am doing a school project where we must not use std::string. How can I do this? In the txt file the data are separated with a ";", and we do not know the length of the words.
Example:
apple1;apple2;apple3
mango1;mango2;mango3
I tried a lot of things, but nothing worked, always got errors.
I tried using getline, but since it is for string it did not work.
I also tried to reload the operator<< but it did not help.

There are two entirely separate getline()'s. One is std::getline(), which takes a std::string as a parameter.
But there's also a member function in std::istream, which works with an array of chars instead of a std::string, eg:
#include <sstream>
#include <iostream>
int main() {
std::istringstream infile{"apple1;apple2;apple3"};
char buffer[256];
while (infile.getline(buffer, sizeof(buffer), ';'))
std::cout << buffer << "\n";
}
Result:
apple1
apple2
apple3
Note: while this fits the school prohibition against using std::string, there's almost no other situation where it makes sense.

Related

scanf function for strings

The problem is simple, the code below does not work. it says Process finished with exit code -1073740940 (0xC0000374). Removing ampersand does not change anything.
int main(){
string x;
scanf("%s",&x);
cout << x;
}
scanf() with the %s format specifier reads bytes into a preallocated character array (char[]), to which you pass a pointer.
Your s is not a character array. It is a std::string, a complex object.
A std::string* is not in any way the same as a char*. Your code overwrites the memory of parts of a complex object in unpredictable ways, so you end up with a crash.
Your compiler should have warned about this, since it knows that a char* is not a std::string*, and because compilers are clever and can detect mistakes like this despite the type-unsafe nature of C library functions.
Even if this were valid via some magic compatibility layer, the string is empty.
Use I/O streams instead.
You cannot pass complex objects through the ... operator of printf/scanf. Many compilers print a warning for that.
scanf requires a pointer of type char* pointing to sufficient storage for an argument of %s. std::string is something completely different.
In C++ the iostream operators are intended for text input and output.
cin >> x;
will do the job.
You should not use scanf in C++. There are many pitfalls, you found one of them.
Another pitfall: %s at scanf is almost always undefined behavior unless you you really ensure that the source stream can only contain strings of limited size. In this case a buffer of char buffer[size]; is the right target.
In any other case you should at least restrict the size of the string to scan. E.g. use %20s and of course a matching char buffer, char buffer[21];in this case. Note the size +1.
You should use cin. But if you want to use scanf() for whatever reason and still manipulate your strings with std::string, then you can read the C-string and use it to initialize your C++ string.
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdio>
#include <string>
using std::cout;
using std::string;
int main()
{
char c_str[80];
scanf("%s", c_str);
string str(c_str);
cout << str << "\n";
}
If you want to use strings, use cin (or getline).
string s;
cin>>s; //s is now read
If you want to use scanf, you want to have a char array (and don't use &):
char text[30];
scanf("%s", text); //text is now read
You can use char[] instead of string
include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
char tmp[101];
scanf("%100s", tmp);
cout << tmp;
}

Using string array as function argument

I meant to write program which will simply delete single letters from the input given by user, let's say we've got some text like: "monkey eat banana" and we supposed to delete the letter 'a' from the text above.
The final output supposed to look like this:
'monkey et bnn'
I've got the code which works pretty much flawlessly with single strings, but I have to use getline() function to obtain some longer texts, that is why I have to declare array of string, in order to pass it's size in the second argument of getline() function, like so:
string text[256];
getline(text, 256);
I would like to use getline() function without giving a size of an array, but I think it's impossible, therefore I need to stick with string array instead of a string.
The problem I've got is that I don't know how to correctly pass array of string, to use it as function's argument. Here's my code;
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
void deleteLetter(string &text[], char c)
{
size_t positionL = text.find(c);
if(positionL == string::npos)
cout << "I'm sorry, there is no such letter in text" << endl;
else
text.erase(positionL, positionL);
cout << "After your character removed: " << text << endl;
}
int main()
{
string str1[256];
char a = 'a';
cin.getline(str1, 256);
deleteLetter(str1, a);
}
I know it's elementary stuff, but still I can't figure it out on my own.
Perhpahs I should reach out for your help.
It sounds to me like you don't need an array of strings. Just to read as many characters the user types, into a string. getline should deal fine with this.
int main()
{
std::string str1; // just a string here, not an array.
std::getline (std::cin,str1);
deleteLetter(str1, 'a');
}
Now you should change the signature of DeleteLetter to take a single string as argument.
void deleteLetter(std::string& text, char c);
How your are going to implement deleteLetter is another question. The way you have it, it will delete only the first occurence of 'a'.
To read a string from console input (cin), you can use the getline() function:
std::string line;
std::getline(std::cin, line);
To remove all the occurrences of a given letter from a string, you can use the so called erase-remove idiom, with a combination of the string::erase() method and the std::remove() algorithm.
(Note that this idiom is usually showed applied to std::vector, but don't forget that a std::string can also be viewed as a "container of characters" stored in sequence, similar to vector, so this idiom can be applied to string content as well.)
To pass a std::string to functions/methods, use the usual C++ rules, i.e.:
If the function is observing the string (without modifying it), pass using const reference: const std::string &
If the function does modify the content of the string, you can pass using non-const reference: std::string &
A simple compilable code follows:
#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
//
// NOTE:
// Since the content of 'text' string is changed by the
// removeLetter() function, pass using non-const reference (&).
//
void removeLetter(string& text, char letter)
{
// Use the erase-remove idiom
text.erase(remove(text.begin(), text.end(), letter),
text.end());
}
int main()
{
string line;
getline(cin, line);
cout << "Read string: " << line << endl;
removeLetter(line, 'a');
cout << "After removing: " << line << endl;
}
This is what I got with MSVC:
C:\Temp\CppTests>cl /EHsc /W4 /nologo test.cpp
test.cpp
C:\Temp\CppTests>test.exe
monkey eats banana
Read string: monkey eats banana
After removing: monkey ets bnn
It's not very clear to me from your question if you also want to pass vectors of strings around (probably in other parts of your code)...
Anyway, if you want a vector of strings (i.e. you want to store some strings in a vector container) you can simply combine these STL class templates like this:
std::vector<std::string> strings;
To pass that to functions/methods, use the usual C++ rules, i.e.:
If the function is observing the array of strings (without modifying it), pass using const references (const &): vector<string> &
If the function does modify the content of the vector, you can pass using non-const references (&): vector<string> &

How to name text file at a certain directory?

Ok thanks for the answer Wug! I changed my code but now it's complaining about:
no matching function for call to
std::basic_ofstream::basic_ofstream(std::basic_string)
I'm not sure it makes any difference but i'll just post all of my code it's not that much so far.
I'll try to keep it cleaner from now on.
#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>
#include <direct.h>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{ /*Introduction*/
SetConsoleTitle("Journal");
string action, prom0, filename, filepath;
filepath = "C:\\Users\\-\\Desktop\\Projects\\Journal Project\\Logs\\";
cout << "Hi and welcome to Journal! \nHere you can write down your day.\nWrite help for";
cout << "more \nType command to start: ";
/*Choose Action*/
cin >> action;
if (action == "new")
{system("cls");
/*Make new Journal file*/
cout << "Filename: ";
getline(cin, filename);
mkdir("C:\\Users\\-\\Desktop\\Projects\\Journal Project\\Logs");
ofstream journallogs(filepath + filename);
journallogs.close();
}
else {
cout << "Wrong command\n";
};
return 0;}
There are 2 things wrong. The first is what the compiler's complaining about:
ofstream journallogs("C:\\Users\\-\\Desktop\\Projects\\Journal Project\\Logs\\" + getline(cin, filename), ios::out);
std::getline(istream&, string&) returns istream&, and you can't add char * to istream. I recommend taking a look at the documentation for getline(), which might help you understand better how you're supposed to use it. Here's an example anyway:
string filepath = "C:\\Users\\-\\Desktop\\Projects\\Journal Project\\Logs\\";
string filename;
getline(cin, filename);
ofstream journallogs(filepath + filename);
The second problem is that you're reading from cin into filename before calling getline(). When you call getline(), any contents of filename are dropped, so you'll effectively trim the first word off of your filename, which probably isn't what you want. To fix that, remove the extraneous cin >> filename;
Note: indentation is important and helps you read your own code. Put forth the effort to keep your code looking nice.
First, learn this:
Start small and simple.
Add complexity a little at a time.
Test at every step.
develop new functionality in isolation.
Never add to code that doesn't work.
For the rest, I don't use Windows, so I can't be certain my code will work there, but the approach will.
You are trying to 1) get a filename from the user, 2) modify it and then 3) use it to open a file; we will develop these three things in isolation.
Getting a filename from the user. Civilized filenames do not contain whitespace, so they can be read with cin, but if you want to allow whitespace you can use getline instead. Either way, test it.
Modifying the filename. Write code that assigns a value to the filename, just as it does to the path-- do not get the filename from the user, it slows down your testing and is not proper isolation. Now try to append them. If you try filepath + filename, you may get a compiler error. Here's where you must understand the difference between std::string and char[]. A char[] is an array of char, and it (usually) contains a null-terminated sequence of characters; you must read up on arrays and pointers. It is a primitive type, and you cannot simply concatenate two of them with '+', you must use something like strcat, which is dangerous if you haven't done your homework on arrays. On the other hand, std::string is more sophisticated, and can handle '+' and many other operations. If you have a std::string x and you decide you want a char[] after all, you can get one like so: x.c_str().
Opening the file. If I remember right, the ofstream constructor can take a char[], but not a std::string. Test this with a hard-coded string (isolation!).
Once you have these three components working independently, you can hook them together.

How to read and write a STL C++ string?

#include<string>
...
string in;
//How do I store a string from stdin to in?
//
//gets(in) - 16 cannot convert `std::string' to `char*' for argument `1' to
//char* gets (char*)'
//
//scanf("%s",in) also gives some weird error
Similarly, how do I write out in to stdout or to a file??
You are trying to mix C style I/O with C++ types. When using C++ you should use the std::cin and std::cout streams for console input and output.
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
...
std::string in;
std::string out("hello world");
std::cin >> in;
std::cout << out;
But when reading a string std::cin stops reading as soon as it encounters a space or new line. You may want to use std::getline to get a entire line of input from the console.
std::getline(std::cin, in);
You use the same methods with a file (when dealing with non binary data).
std::ofstream ofs("myfile.txt");
ofs << myString;
There are many way to read text from stdin into a std::string. The thing about std::strings though is that they grow as needed, which in turn means they reallocate. Internally a std::string has a pointer to a fixed-length buffer. When the buffer is full and you request to add one or more character onto it, the std::string object will create a new, larger buffer instead of the old one and move all the text to the new buffer.
All this to say that if you know the length of text you are about to read beforehand then you can improve performance by avoiding these reallocations.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <streambuf>
using namespace std;
// ...
// if you don't know the length of string ahead of time:
string in(istreambuf_iterator<char>(cin), istreambuf_iterator<char>());
// if you do know the length of string:
in.reserve(TEXT_LENGTH);
in.assign(istreambuf_iterator<char>(cin), istreambuf_iterator<char>());
// alternatively (include <algorithm> for this):
copy(istreambuf_iterator<char>(cin), istreambuf_iterator<char>(),
back_inserter(in));
All of the above will copy all text found in stdin, untill end-of-file. If you only want a single line, use std::getline():
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
// ...
string in;
while( getline(cin, in) ) {
// ...
}
If you want a single character, use std::istream::get():
#include <iostream>
// ...
char ch;
while( cin.get(ch) ) {
// ...
}
C++ strings must be read and written using >> and << operators and other C++ equivalents. However, if you want to use scanf as in C, you can always read a string the C++ way and use sscanf with it:
std::string s;
std::getline(cin, s);
sscanf(s.c_str(), "%i%i%c", ...);
The easiest way to output a string is with:
s = "string...";
cout << s;
But printf will work too:
[fixed printf]
printf("%s", s.c_str());
The method c_str() returns a pointer to a null-terminated ASCII string, which can be used by all standard C functions.

Why does c_str() print the string twice?

So...
when I go:
cout<<stringName<<endl;
I get:
NT
But when I go:
cout<<stringName.c_str()<<endl;
I get:
NTNT
Why?
A quick test with the following code:
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(void) {
string str = "NT";
cout << str.c_str() << endl;
return 0;
}
produces one instance of NT so it looks like you probably have another output call somewhere.
A traditional C string (accessed through a char const*) has a sequence of characters terminated by a character 0. (Not the numeral 0, but an actual zero value, which we write as '\0'.) There's no explicit length — so various string operations just read one character at a time until it hits the '\0'.
A C++ std::string has an explicit length in its structure.
Is it possible that the memory layout of your string's characters looks like this:
'NTNT\0'
but the string's length is set to 2?
That would result in exactly this behavior — manipulating the std::string directly will act like it's just two characters long, but if you do traditional C operations using s.c_str(), it will look like "NTNT".
I'm not sure what shenanigans would get you into this state, but it would certainly match the symptoms.
One way you could get into this state would be to actually write to the string's characters, something like: strcat((char *)s.c_str(), "NT")
Show more code. It seems like you did cout << ealier and forgot that you did it. What does it print if you do cout<< "mofo" << stringName.c_str()<< "|||" << endl; Does it say NTmofoNT||| ? if so that may well be what happened ;)
This is not a problem with c_str(), but probably related to some other anomaly in the rest of the program.
Make a "hello world" application that does these same operations and you'll see it works fine there.