Use stringstream to read line of varying elements - c++

Question

I have a file I need to read in that looks somethig like this:
1 2.23 Dove Body Wash
3 .50 Bic Pen
11 12.99 Tombstone Pizza
Where the field with the names of the products can have either only one word (Shampoo) or any number of words (Big mama's homestyle steak fries). The input file can also have blank lines, which I just need to skip over.
So what I have right now looks like this (using getline and stringstream):
This struct:
struct CartItem {
string itemName;
int quantity;
double pricePerItem;
CartItem();
CartItem(string name, int qty,double price);
};
and then this code.
while (getline(itemList, inputline)) { //itemlist is my ifstream, inputline is a string declared.
ss.clear();
ss.str(inputline);
ss >> item.quantity >> item.pricePerItem >> item.itemName;
string word;
while (ss >> word)
{
item.itemName += " " + word;
}
if (ss.fail()) {
continue;
}
else
shoppingList.push_back(item);
}
sortItems(shoppingList, sortedList);
printReport(sortedList);
but it's not working (just crashing). If I replace the while(ss >> word) fragment with if(ss>>word) it works but I only get the second string from the file. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong here?

Answer 1

You should provide more details, e.g. what "just crashing" means. However, I think you have problem with your logic.
ss >> word will be called on the final check in the while loop, when ss is already out of words, thus the word will fail to be extracted to word when the while loop exits, setting ss's fail bit. Now, ss.fail() will always be true and you will never add items to your list.
I am guessing that you later rely on shoppingList having at least one item and this is the crash.
Try changing:
while (ss >> word)
{
item.itemName += " " + word;
}
to:
while (ss.good())
{
ss >> word;
item.itemName += " " + word;
}