Hi I have some C++ code that uses user defined input to generate file-names for some output files:
std::string outputName = fileName;
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
{
outputName.pop_back();
}
std::string outputName1 = outputName;
std::string outputName2 = outputName;
outputName.append(".fasta");
outputName1.append("_Ploid1.fasta");
outputName2.append("_Ploid2.fasta");
Where fileName could be any word the user can define with .csv after it e.g. '~/Desktop/mytest.csv'
The code chomps .csv off and makes three filenames / paths for 3 output streams.
It then creates them and attempts to open them:
std::ofstream outputFile;
outputFile.open(outputName.c_str());
std::ofstream outputFile1;
outputFile1.open(outputName1.c_str());
std::ofstream outputFile2;
outputFile2.open(outputName2.c_str());
I made sure to pass the names to open as const char* with the c_str method, however if I test my code by adding the following line:
std::cout << outputFile.is_open() << " " << outputFile1.is_open() << " " << outputFile2.is_open() << std::endl;
and compiling and setting fineName as "test.csv". I successfully compile and run, however,
Three zeros's are printed to screen showing the three filestreams for output are not in fact open. Why are they not opening? I know passing strings as filenames does not work which is why I thought conversion with c_str() would be sufficient.
Thanks,
Ben W.
Your issue is likely to be due to the path beginning with ~, which isn't expanded to /{home,Users}/${LOGNAME}.
ifstream open file C++
This answer to How to create a folder in the home directory? may be of use to you.
Unfortunately, there is no standard, portable way of finding out exactly why open() failed:
Detecting reason for failure to open an ofstream when fail() is true
I know passing strings as filenames does not work which is why I thought conversion with c_str() would be sufficient.
std::basic_ofstream::open() does accept a const std::string & (since C++11)!
Related
Hello and sorry if the answer is clear to those out there. I am still fairly new to programming and ask for some guidance.
This function should write just one of the three string parameters it takes in to the txt file I have already generated. When I run the program the function seems to work fine and the cout statement shows the info is in the string and does get passes successfully. The issue is after running the program I go to check the txt file and find it is still blank.
I am using C++17 on visual studio professional 2015.
void AddNewMagicItem(const std::string & ItemKey,
const std::string & ItemDescription,
const std::string &filename)
{
const char* ItemKeyName = ItemKey.c_str();
const char* ItemDescriptionBody = ItemDescription.c_str();
const char* FileToAddItemTo = filename.c_str();
std::ofstream AddingItem(FileToAddItemTo);
std::ifstream FileCheck(FileToAddItemTo);
AddingItem.open(FileToAddItemTo, std::ios::out | std::ios::app);
if (_access(FileToAddItemTo, 0) == 0)
{
if (FileCheck.is_open())
{
AddingItem << ItemKey;
std::cout << ItemKey << std::endl;
}
}
AddingItem.close(); // not sure these are necessary
FileCheck.close(); //not sure these are necessary
}
This should print out a message onto a .txt file when you pass a string into the ItemKey parameter.
Thank you very much for your help and again please forgive me as I am also new to stackoverflow and might have made some mistakes in formatting this question or not being clear enough.
ADD ON: Thank you everyone who has answered this question and for all your help. I appreciate the help and would like to personally thank you all for your help, comments, and input on this topic. May your code compile every time and may your code reviews always be commented.
As mentioned by previous commenters/answerers, your code can be simplified by letting the destructor of the ofstream object close the file for you, and by refraining from using the c_str() conversion function.
This code seems to do what you wanted, on GCC v8 at least:
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
void AddNewMagicItem(const std::string& ItemKey,
const std::string& ItemDescription,
const std::string& fileName)
{
std::ofstream AddingItem{fileName, std::ios::app};
if (AddingItem) { // if file successfully opened
AddingItem << ItemKey;
std::cout << ItemKey << std::endl;
}
else {
std::cerr << "Could not open file " << fileName << std::endl;
}
// implicit close of AddingItem file handle here
}
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
std::string outputFileName{"foobar.txt"};
std::string desc{"Description"};
// use implicit conversion of "key*" C strings to std::string objects:
AddNewMagicItem("key1", desc, outputFileName);
AddNewMagicItem("key2", desc, outputFileName);
AddNewMagicItem("key3", desc, outputFileName);
return 0;
}
Main Problem
std::ofstream AddingItem(FileToAddItemTo);
opened the file. Opening it again with
AddingItem.open(FileToAddItemTo, std::ios::out | std::ios::app);
caused the stream to fail.
Solution
Move the open modes into the constructor (std::ofstream AddingItem(FileToAddItemTo, std::ios::app);) and remove the manual open.
Note that only the app open mode is needed. ofstream implies the out mode is already set.
Note: If the user does not have access to the file, the file cannot be opened. There is no need to test for this separately. I find testing for an open file followed by a call to perror or a similar target-specific call to provide details on the cause of the failure to be a useful feature.
Note that there are several different states the stream could be in and is_open is sort of off to the side. You want to check all of them to make sure an IO transaction succeeded. In this case the file is open, so if is_open is all you check, you miss the failbit. A common related bug when reading is only testing for EOF and winding up in a loop of failed reads that will never reach the end of the file (or reading past the end of the file by checking too soon).
AddingItem << ItemKey;
becomes
if (!(AddingItem << ItemKey))
{
//handle failure
}
Sometimes you will need better granularity to determine exactly what happened in order to properly handle the error. Check the state bits and possibly perror and target-specific
diagnostics as above.
Side Problem
Opening a file for simultaneous read and write with multiple fstreams is not recommended. The different streams will provide different buffered views of the same file resulting in instability.
Attempting to read and write the same file through a single ostream can be done, but it is exceptionally difficult to get right. The standard rule of thumb is read the file into memory and close the file, edit the memory, and the open the file, write the memory, close the file. Keep the in-memory copy of the file if possible so that you do not have to reread the file.
If you need to be certain a file was written correctly, write the file and then read it back, parse it, and verify that the information is correct. While verifying, do not allow the file to be written again. Don't try to multithread this.
Details
Here's a little example to show what went wrong and where.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
int main()
{
std::ofstream AddingItem("test");
if (AddingItem.is_open()) // test file is open
{
std::cout << "open";
}
if (AddingItem) // test stream is writable
{
std::cout << " and writable\n";
}
else
{
std::cout << " and NOT writable\n";
}
AddingItem.open("test", std::ios::app);
if (AddingItem.is_open())
{
std::cout << "open";
}
if (AddingItem)
{
std::cout << " and writable\n";
}
else
{
std::cout << " and NOT writable\n";
}
}
Assuming the working directory is valid and the user has permissions to write to test, we will see that the program output is
open and writable
open and NOT writable
This shows that
std::ofstream AddingItem("test");
opened the file and that
AddingItem.open("test", std::ios::app);
left the file open, but put the stream in a non-writable error state to force you to deal with the potential logic error of trying to have two files open in the same stream at the same time. Basically it's saying, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." without Undefined Behaviour or the full Hal 9000 bloodbath.
Unfortunately to get this message, you have to look at the correct error bits. In this case I looked at all of them with if (AddingItem).
As a complement of the already given question comments:
If you want to write data into a file, I do not understand why you have used a std::ifstream. Only std::ofstream is needed.
You can write data into a file this way:
const std::string file_path("../tmp_test/file_test.txt"); // path to the file
std::string content_to_write("Something\n"); // content to be written in the file
std::ofstream file_s(file_path, std::ios::app); // construct and open the ostream in appending mode
if(file_s) // if the stream is successfully open
{
file_s << content_to_write; // write data
file_s.close(); // close the file (or you can also let the file_s destructor do it for you at the end of the block)
}
else
std::cout << "Fail to open: " << file_path << std::endl; // write an error message
As you said being quite new to programming, I have explicitly commented each line to make it more understandable.
I hope it helps.
EDIT:
For more explanation, you tried to open the file 3 times (twice in writing mode and once in reading mode). This is the cause of your problems. You only need to open the file once in writing mode.
Morever, checking that the input stream is open will not tell you if the output stream is open too. Keep in mind that you open a file stream. If you want to check if it is properly open, you have to check it over the related object, not over another one.
I would like to make a read and write file in c++. I would also like the information i write be a string. so then i can read that string from the file and see the value. Im gonna use this sort of like a settings file where the program can read your settings that you've used and apply them without having to reconfigure the program everytime. In small here's what i got:
int main()
{
std::string tortilla = "tacos";
std::string godast = "pizza";
std::ofstream MyFile;
MyFile.open("1.txt");
MyFile << tortilla;
MyFile.close();
std::ifstream ReadFile("1.txt");
while (std::getline(ReadFile, tortilla))
As you see the code is not done yet by far but i just want to learn this element for now. Thank you in before.
EDIT: Here i want the output of reading "tortilla" to be tacos. So the string is intact troughout
To output the content of tortilla add:
{
std::cout << "tortilla is " << tortilla << std::endl;
}
And iostream must be included for std::cout. HTH.
I'm trying to get a string from the user through stdin and save it to the variable InputString, then create a binary file with the same name as the value of InputString. This is the code I've written so far:
std::string InputString;
getline(std::cin, InputString);
std::cout << InputString << std::endl;
// The code above works.
// Errors start below. :(
void Printi(std::string filename)
{
std::ofstream Printi(filename".bin");
Printi((char*)&Hans, sizeof(Person)); // Hans is an instance of my class Person.
Printi.close();
}
Printi(InputString);
I get the following errors (translated into English from my localized compiler):
"Printi": Local function definition is not allowed
Missing ")" (in line std::ofstream Printi..)
How can I solve this problem using only standard C++ libraries?
std::ofstream Printi(filename".bin") needs to be std::ofstream Printi(filename + ".bin"). The + operator is used to concatenate the strings and append the .bin to the end of what was supplied in the file name.
I'm trying to store strings directly into a file to be read later in C++ (basically for the full scope I'm trying to store an object array with string variables in a file, and those string variables will be read through something like object[0].string). However, everytime I try to read the string variables the system gives me a jumbled up error. The following codes are a basic part of what I'm trying.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
/*
//this is run first to create the file and store the string
int main(){
string reed;
reed = "sees";
ofstream ofs("filrsee.txt", ios::out|ios::binary);
ofs.write(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&reed), sizeof(reed));
ofs.close();
}*/
//this is run after that to open the file and read the string
int main(){
string ghhh;
ifstream ifs("filrsee.txt", ios::in|ios::binary);
ifs.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&ghhh), sizeof(ghhh));
cout<<ghhh;
ifs.close();
return 0;
}
The second part is where things go haywire when I try to read it.
Sorry if it's been asked before, I've taken a look around for similar questions but most of them are a bit different from what I'm trying to do or I don't really understand what they're trying to do (still quite new to this).
What am I doing wrong?
You are reading from a file and trying to put the data in the string structure itself, overwriting it, which is plain wrong.
As it can be verified at http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/istream/read/ , the types you used were wrong, and you know it because you had to force the std::string into a char * using a reinterpret_cast.
C++ Hint: using a reinterpret_cast in C++ is (almost) always a sign you did something wrong.
Why is it so complicated to read a file?
A long time ago, reading a file was easy. In some Basic-like language, you used the function LOAD, and voilà!, you had your file.
So why can't we do it now?
Because you don't know what's in a file.
It could be a string.
It could be a serialized array of structs with raw data dumped from memory.
It could even be a live stream, that is, a file which is appended continuously (a log file, the stdin, whatever).
You could want to read the data word by word
... or line by line...
Or the file is so large it doesn't fit in a string, so you want to read it by parts.
etc..
The more generic solution is to read the file (thus, in C++, a fstream), byte per byte using the function get (see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/istream/get/), and do yourself the operation to transform it into the type you expect, and stopping at EOF.
The std::isteam interface have all the functions you need to read the file in different ways (see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/istream/), and even then, there is an additional non-member function for the std::string to read a file until a delimiter is found (usually "\n", but it could be anything, see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/getline/)
But I want a "load" function for a std::string!!!
Ok, I get it.
We assume that what you put in the file is the content of a std::string, but keeping it compatible with a C-style string, that is, the \0 character marks the end of the string (if not, we would need to load the file until reaching the EOF).
And we assume you want the whole file content fully loaded once the function loadFile returns.
So, here's the loadFile function:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
bool loadFile(const std::string & p_name, std::string & p_content)
{
// We create the file object, saying I want to read it
std::fstream file(p_name.c_str(), std::fstream::in) ;
// We verify if the file was successfully opened
if(file.is_open())
{
// We use the standard getline function to read the file into
// a std::string, stoping only at "\0"
std::getline(file, p_content, '\0') ;
// We return the success of the operation
return ! file.bad() ;
}
// The file was not successfully opened, so returning false
return false ;
}
If you are using a C++11 enabled compiler, you can add this overloaded function, which will cost you nothing (while in C++03, baring optimizations, it could have cost you a temporary object):
std::string loadFile(const std::string & p_name)
{
std::string content ;
loadFile(p_name, content) ;
return content ;
}
Now, for completeness' sake, I wrote the corresponding saveFile function:
bool saveFile(const std::string & p_name, const std::string & p_content)
{
std::fstream file(p_name.c_str(), std::fstream::out) ;
if(file.is_open())
{
file.write(p_content.c_str(), p_content.length()) ;
return ! file.bad() ;
}
return false ;
}
And here, the "main" I used to test those functions:
int main()
{
const std::string name(".//myFile.txt") ;
const std::string content("AAA BBB CCC\nDDD EEE FFF\n\n") ;
{
const bool success = saveFile(name, content) ;
std::cout << "saveFile(\"" << name << "\", \"" << content << "\")\n\n"
<< "result is: " << success << "\n" ;
}
{
std::string myContent ;
const bool success = loadFile(name, myContent) ;
std::cout << "loadFile(\"" << name << "\", \"" << content << "\")\n\n"
<< "result is: " << success << "\n"
<< "content is: [" << myContent << "]\n"
<< "content ok is: " << (myContent == content)<< "\n" ;
}
}
More?
If you want to do more than that, then you will need to explore the C++ IOStreams library API, at http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/
You can't use std::istream::read() to read into a std::string object. What you could do is to determine the size of the file, create a string of suitable size, and read the data into the string's character array:
std::string str;
std::ifstream file("whatever");
std::string::size_type size = determine_size_of(file);
str.resize(size);
file.read(&str[0], size);
The tricky bit is determining the size the string should have. Given that the character sequence may get translated while reading, e.g., because line end sequences are transformed, this pretty much amounts to reading the string in the general case. Thus, I would recommend against doing it this way. Instead, I would read the string using something like this:
std::string str;
std::ifstream file("whatever");
if (std::getline(file, str, '\0')) {
...
}
This works OK for text strings and is about as fast as it gets on most systems. If the file can contain null characters, e.g., because it contains binary data, this doesn't quite work. If this is the case, I'd use an intermediate std::ostringstream:
std::ostringstream out;
std::ifstream file("whatever");
out << file.rdbuf();
std::string str = out.str();
A string object is not a mere char array, the line
ifs.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&ghhh), sizeof(ghhh));
is probably the root of your problems.
try applying the following changes:
char[BUFF_LEN] ghhh;
....
ifs.read(ghhh, BUFF_LEN);
I'm trying to find out if two strings I have are the same, for the purpose of unit testing. The first is a predefined string, hard-coded into the program. The second is a read in from a text file with an ifstream using std::getline(), and then taken as a substring. Both values are stored as C++ strings.
When I output both of the strings to the console using cout for testing, they both appear to be identical:
ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile
ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile
However, the string.compare returns stating they are not equal. When outputting to a text file, the two strings appear as follows:
ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile
T^#h^#i^#s^#I^#s^#A^#T^#e^#s^#t^#S^#t^#r^#i^#n^#g^#O^#u^#t^#p^#u^#t^#
t^#e^#d^#T^#o^#A^#F^#i^#l^#e
I'm guessing this is some kind of encoding problem, and if I was in my native language (good old C#), I wouldn't have too many problems. As it is I'm with C/C++ and Vi, and frankly don't really know where to go from here! I've tried looking at maybe converting to/from ansi/unicode, and also removing the odd characters, but I'm not even sure if they really exist or not..
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
EDIT
Apologies, this is my first time posting here. The code below is how I'm going through the process:
ifstream myInput;
ofstream myOutput;
myInput.open(fileLocation.c_str());
myOutput.open("test.txt");
TEST_ASSERT(myInput.is_open() == 1);
string compare1 = "ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile";
string fileBuffer;
std::getline(myInput, fileBuffer);
string compare2 = fileBuffer.substr(400,100);
cout << compare1 + "\n";
cout << compare2 + "\n";
myOutput << compare1 + "\n";
myOutput << compare2 + "\n";
cin.get();
myInput.close();
myOutput.close();
TEST_ASSERT(compare1.compare(compare2) == 0);
How did you create the content of myInput? I would guess that this file is created in two-byte encoding. You can use hex-dump to verify this theory, or use a different editor to create this file.
The simpliest way would be to launch cmd.exe and type
echo "ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile" > test.txt
UPDATE:
If you cannot change the encoding of the myInput file, you can try to use wide-chars in your program. I.e. use wstring instead of string, wifstream instead of ifstream, wofstream, wcout, etc.
The following works for me and writes the text pasted below into the file. Note the '\0' character embedded into the string.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
int main()
{
std::istringstream myInput("0123456789ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile\x0 12ou 9 21 3r8f8 reohb jfbhv jshdbv coerbgf vibdfjchbv jdfhbv jdfhbvg jhbdfejh vbfjdsb vjdfvb jfvfdhjs jfhbsd jkefhsv gjhvbdfsjh jdsfhb vjhdfbs vjhdsfg kbhjsadlj bckslASB VBAK VKLFB VLHBFDSL VHBDFSLHVGFDJSHBVG LFS1BDV LH1BJDFLV HBDSH VBLDFSHB VGLDFKHB KAPBLKFBSV LFHBV YBlkjb dflkvb sfvbsljbv sldb fvlfs1hbd vljkh1ykcvb skdfbv nkldsbf vsgdb lkjhbsgd lkdcfb vlkbsdc xlkvbxkclbklxcbv");
std::ofstream myOutput("test.txt");
//std::ostringstream myOutput;
std::string str1 = "ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile";
std::string fileBuffer;
std::getline(myInput, fileBuffer);
std::string str2 = fileBuffer.substr(10,100);
std::cout << str1 + "\n";
std::cout << str2 + "\n";
myOutput << str1 + "\n";
myOutput << str2 + "\n";
std::cout << str1.compare(str2) << '\n';
//std::cout << myOutput.str() << '\n';
return 0;
}
Output:
ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile
ThisIsATestStringOutputtedToAFile
It turns out that the problem was that the file encoding of myInput was UTF-16, whereas the comparison string was UTF-8. The way to convert them with the OS limitations I had for this project (Linux, C/C++ code), was to use the iconv() functions. To keep the compatibility of the C++ strings I'd been using, I ended up saving the string to a new text file, then running iconv through the system() command.
system("iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 subStr.txt -o convertedSubStr.txt");
Reading the outputted string back in then gave me the string in the format I needed for the comparison to work properly.
NOTE
I'm aware that this is not the most efficient way to do this. I've I'd had the luxury of a Windows environment and the windows.h libraries, things would have been a lot easier. In this case though, the code was in some rarely used unit tests, and as such didn't need to be highly optimized, hence the creation, destruction and I/O operations of some text files wasn't an issue.