Non-Space delimited text file to 2D vector - c++

Question

I've got a file that can be of any size and is a series of char values without any spaces between (except a blank space is treated as a blank cell of a grid).
xxxxxxx
xx xx
xxyyyxx
After some great help I've gone with the method to use a vector<vector<char> > however I cannot seem to populate it.
void readCourse(istream& fin) {
// using 3 and 7 to match example shown above
vector<vector<char> > data(3, vector<char>(7));
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < 7; j++) {
fin.get(data[i][j]); // I believe the problem exists here
} // Does the .get() method work here?
} // Or does it need to be .push_back()?
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < 7; j++) {
cout << data[i][j];
}
}
}
Is my method for populating my 2D vector valid? If not, can you please point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

I'd keep it simple and efficient with a single vector<char>:
vector<char> readCourse(istream& fin) {
vector<char> course(3*(7+2)); // 3x7 plus newlines
fin.read(course.data(), course.size());
course.resize(fin.gcount());
auto end = remove(course.begin(), course.end(), '\n');
end = remove(course.begin(), end, '\r');
course.erase(end, course.end()); // purge all \n and \r
return course;
}
That's a single input operation to get all the data, followed by removing the characters you don't need. You can then access the result in a 2D way like this:
course.at(x + y*7) // assuming width 7
That may seem a bit inconvenient, but it is efficient and compact--the overhead is always three pointers and a single heap allocation, instead of being proportional to the number of rows.

Answer 2

Solution I ended up using after ADT implementation:
void readCourse(std::istream& fin) {
std::vector<std::string> level
std::string line;
while(std::getline(fin, line) {
level.push_back(line);
}
for (std::size_t i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
for (std::size_t j = 0; j < 7; j++) {
std::cout << data[i][j];
}
std::cout << std::endl;
}
}