Having trouble parsing simple text file separated by commas [duplicate] - c++

Question

I'm trying to read a list of items from from a file and then store them into a vector. The issue is my code is adding the last item to the vector twice and I'm not sure why the it keeps reading the file even though the program has reached the end.
Here's what's in the text file. The "Oranges" line appears twice when I display the contents of the vector.
Apples-pounds-10 2
Oranges-pounds-5 6
Here's the code
//Read the contents of the list to a file
while (!inputFile.fail())
{
//Extract the line from the list
getline(inputFile,item_name,'-');
getline(inputFile,item_unit,'-');
inputFile >> item_amount;
inputFile >> item_price;
//Create an instance of the item object
Item New_Item(item_name, item_unit, item_amount,item_price);
//Push it to the list vector
list.push_back(New_Item);
}
//Close the file
inputFile.close();

Answer 1

This is a typical symptom of the while (!infile.fail()) anti-pattern.
I'd define a struct and overload operator>> for that type:
struct item {
std::string name;
std::string unit;
int amount;
int price;
};
std::istream &std::operator>>(std::istream &is, item &i) {
getline(is, i.name, '-');
getline(is, i.unit, '-');
is >> i.amount;
return is >> i.price;
}
With those defined, reading the data borders on trivial:
std::ifstream inputFile("fileNameHere");
std::vector<New_Item> items { std::istream_iterator<Item>(inputFile),
std::istream_iterator<Item>() };
[I changed it from list to vector, because, well, you really don't want list. You can change it back, but probably shouldn't.]

Answer 2

The problem is that the "fail" flag is not set until you make an attempt at reading some more data from the file. Here is a quick way of fixing this:
for (;;) {
//Extract the line from the list
getline(inputFile,item_name,'-');
getline(inputFile,item_unit,'-');
inputFile >> item_amount;
inputFile >> item_price;
if (inputFile.fail()) break;
//Create an instance of the item object
Item New_Item(item_name, item_unit, item_amount,item_price);
//Push it to the list vector
list.push_back(New_Item);
}
If this is for a learning exercise, and you have not learn the >> operator yet, this should do it. Otherwise, the operator>> approach is better.