c++ line from file stored in char array - c++

I want to be able to read a full line into a character array using a function.
example input text is:
Schmidt, Helga
Alvarez, Ruben
Zowkowski, Aaron
Huang, Sun Lee
Einstein, Beverly
However, im not sure how to read a full line of characters into the array. I know the delimiter for >> is whitespace, but I'm not sure if I change that delimiter to '\n' if it'd work?
void buildList(char (*array)[25], ifstream& inputFile){
string line;
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
getline(inputFile, line);
array[i] = line.c_str();
}
Currently this only reads either a last name or first name into my input instead of the whole line. I'm not sure how I can go about changing this. Thanks.

First, you definitely want to use std::string here. Once you
do that, you can use std::getline:
std::vector<std::string>
buildList( istream& input )
{
std::vector<std::string> results;
std::string line
while ( std::getline( input, line ) ) {
results.push_back( line );
}
}
This will make for much simpler and more robust code.
If you have to use such a broken interface, there is a member
function getline:
for ( int i = 0; i != 5; ++ i ) {
input.getline( array[i], maxLength );
}
Also: a function should never take an std::ifstream& as
argument (unless it is going to open or close the file). An
std::istream& should be used.

Use this-
void buildList(char (*array)[25], ifstream& inputFile){
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
std::inputFile.getline(array[i],50);
}
The second parameter of getline is the maximum number of characters to write to the character array.

Related

How to delimit and write file contents to vector?

So let's say I have a vector of ints and a text file which looks like this:
1|2|3|4|5
How can I add the numbers to the vector?
First, you would open the file using std::ifstream. There are a few ways you could then read these out, but one example would be to use std::getline with a custom "end of line" character, being your | in this case:
std::vector<int> myVect;
std::ifstream reader("./file.txt"); //Replace with path to your file
for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
std::string item;
std::getline(reader, item, '|'); //The third argument tells it to read until a '|' char
int item = std::stoi(item); //Convert from string to int
myVect.push_back(number);
}
This example relies on you knowing how many elements you want to get, but can be modified to work with an unknown size.

Extracting a particular data from a CSV file in c++

I have written a program to read a CSV file but I'm having some trouble in extracting data from that CSV file in c++. I want to count the no. of columns starting from the 5th column in the 1st row until the last column of the 1st row of the CSV file. I have written the following code to read a CVS file, but I am not sure how shall I count the no. of columns as I have mentioned before.
Will appreciate it if anyone could please tell me how shall I go about it?
char* substring(char* source, int startIndex, int endIndex)
{
int size = endIndex - startIndex + 1;
char* s = new char[size+1];
strncpy(s, source + startIndex, size); //you can read the documentation of strncpy online
s[size] = '\0'; //make it null-terminated
return s;
}
char** readCSV(const char* csvFileName, int& csvLineCount)
{
ifstream fin(csvFileName);
if (!fin)
{
return nullptr;
}
csvLineCount = 0;
char line[1024];
while(fin.getline(line, 1024))
{
csvLineCount++;
};
char **lines = new char*[csvLineCount];
fin.clear();
fin.seekg(0, ios::beg);
for (int i=0; i<csvLineCount; i++)
{
fin.getline(line, 1024);
lines[i] = new char[strlen(line)+1];
strcpy(lines[i], line);
};
fin.close();
return lines;
}
I have attached a few lines from the CSV file:-
Province/State,Country/Region,Lat,Long,1/22/20,1/23/20,1/24/20,
,Afghanistan,33.0,65.0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
,Albania,41.1533,20.1683,0,0,0,0
What I need is, in the 1st row, the number of dates after Long.
To answer your question:
I have attached a few lines from the CSV file:-
Province/State,Country/Region,Lat,Long,1/22/20,1/23/20,1/24/20, ,Afghanistan,33.0,65.0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, ,Albania,41.1533,20.1683,0,0,0,0
What I need is, in the 1st row, the number of dates after Long.
Yeah, not that difficult - that's how I would do it:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
#include <regex>
#define FILENAME "test.csv" //Your filename as Macro
//(The compiler just sees text.csv instead of FILENAME)
void read(){
std::string n;
//date format pattern %m/%dd/%YY
std::regex pattern1("\\b\\d{1}[/]\\d{2}[/]\\d{2}\\b");
//date format pattern %mm/%dd/%YY
std::regex pattern2("\\b\\d{2}[/]\\d{2}[/]\\d{2}\\b");
std::smatch result1, result2;
std::ifstream file(FILENAME, std::ios::in);
if ( ! file.is_open() )
{
std::cout << "Could not open file!" << '\n';
}
do{
getline(file,n,',');
//https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/string/basic_string/getline
if(std::regex_search(n,result1,pattern1))
std::cout << result1.str(1) << n << std::endl;
if(std::regex_search(n,result2,pattern2))
std::cout << result2.str(1) << n << std::endl;
}
while(!file.eof());
file.close();
}
int main ()
{
read();
return 0;
}
The file test.csv contains the following for testing:
Province/State,Country/Region,Lat,Long,1/22/20,1/23/20,1/24/20, ,Afghanistan,33.0,65.0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, ,Albania,41.1533,20.1683,0,0,0,0
Province/State,Country/Region,Lat,Long,1/25/20,12/26/20,1/27/20, ,Bfghanistan,33.0,65.0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, ,Blbania,41.1533,20.1683,0,0,0,0
It actually is pretty simple:
getline takes the open file and "escapes" at a so called escape-charachter,
in your case a comma ','.
(That is the very best way I found in reading csv - you can replace it with whatever you want, for example: ';' or ' ' or '...' - guess you get the drill)
After this you got all data nicely separated underneath one another without a comma.
Now you can "filter" out what you need. I use regex - but use what ever you want.
(Just fyi: For c++ tagged questions you shouldn't use c-style like strncpy..)
I gave you an example for 1.23.20 (m/dd/yy) and to make it simple if your file contains a november or december like 12.22.20 (mm/dd/yy) to make
the regex pattern more easy to read/understand in 2 lines.
you can/may have to expand the regex pattern if the data somehow matches
your date format in the file, really good explained here and not as complicated as it looks.
From that point you can put all the printed stuff f.e. in a vector (some more convenient array) to handle and/or pass/return data - that's up to you.
If you need more explaining I am happy to help you out and/or expand this example, just leave a comment.
You basically want to search for the seperator substring within your line (normally it is ';').
If you print out your lines it should look like this:
a;b;c;d;e;f;g;h
There are several ways to achieve what you want, I would look for a strip or split upon character function. Something along the example below should work. If you use std you can go with str.IndexOf instead of a loop.
int rows(char* line,char seperator, int count) {
unsigned length = strlen(line);
for (int i=pos; i<length;i++){
if(strcmp(line[i],seperator)) break;
}
count++;
if (i<length-1) return rows(substring(line,i,length-i),seperator,count);
else return count;
}
The recursion can obviously be replaced by one loop ;)
int countSign(char* line, char* sign){
unsigned l = strlen(line);
int count = 0;
for (int i=0; i < l; i++) {
if(strcmp(line[i],sign)) count++;
}
}

How to use std::getline() to read a text file into an array of strings in C++?

I am trying to use std::getline() in my project to read in a text file into an array of strings.
Here is my code:
ifstream ifs ( path );
string * in_file;
int count = 0;
while ( !ifs.eof() )
{
++count;
if ( count == 1 )
{
in_file = new string[1];
}
else
{
// Dynamically allocate another space in the stack
string *old_in_file = in_file;
in_file = new string[count];
// Copy over values
for ( int i = 0 ; i < ( count - 1 ) ; i++ )
{
in_file[i] = old_in_file[i];
}
delete[] old_in_file;
}
// After doing some debugging I know this is the problem what am I
// doing wrong with it?
getline(ifs,in_file[count - 1]);
}
So after doing some decoding I know that the getline() is not placing any value in the array of strings. It seems to place a null string in the array.
The goal is to read in a text file like:
Hello
Bye
See you later
The array will be filled like:
in_file [0] = Hello
in_file [1] = Bye
in_file [2] = See you later
Never wrap reading from the stream with the following loop:
while ( !ifs.eof() )
At some websites, you will find an example telling you to do:
while ( ifs.good() )
which is a bit better than the first loop, yet still it is quite error prone and not advisable to do. Have a look at: Why is iostream::eof inside a loop condition considered wrong?
The most common ways of reading the files are either using std::getline when reading by lines:
std::string line;
while ( std::getline(ifs, line) ) {
if (line.empty()) // be careful: an empty line might be read
continue;
...
}
or simply using >> operator when reading by words or extracting concrete types (e.g. numbers):
std::string word;
while ( ifs >> word ) {
...
}
And to your dynamically allocated C-style array of std::string objects: avoid dynamic allocation as much as possible. Believe me, you don't want to take care of memory management on your own. Prefer using objects with automatic storage duration. Take advantage of what the standard library provides.
As it was pointed out already: use STL containers such as std::vector instead of C-style arrays:
std::ifstream ifs(path);
std::vector<std::string> lines;
std::string line;
while ( std::getline(ifs, line) )
{
// skip empty lines:
if (line.empty())
continue;
lines.push_back(line);
}
Why so trouble ?
Simply use std:vector of std::string
std::string str;
std::vector <std::string> vec;
while ( std::getline(ifs,str) )
{
vec.push_back(str) ;
}
If you really need an array of string
do :
string * in_file = new string[vec.size()];
And copy the elements from vec to in_file
for(size_t i=0;i<vec.size();i++)
in_file[i] = vec[i];

Getting the nth line of a text file in C++

I need to read the nth line of a text file (e.g. textfile.findline(0) would find the first line of the text file loaded with ifstream textfile). Is this possible?
I don't need to put the contents of the file in an array/vector, I need to just assign a specific line of the text file to a varible (specifically a int).
P.S. I am looking for the simplest solution that would not require me to use any big external library (e.g. Boost)
Thanks in advance.
How about this?
std::string ReadNthLine(const std::string& filename, int N)
{
std::ifstream in(filename.c_str());
std::string s;
//for performance
s.reserve(some_reasonable_max_line_length);
//skip N lines
for(int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
std::getline(in, s);
std::getline(in,s);
return s;
}
If you want to read the start of the nth line, you can use stdin::ignore to skip over the first n-1 lines, then read from the next line to assign to the variable.
template<typename T>
void readNthLine(istream& in, int n, T& value) {
for (int i = 0; i < n-1; ++i) {
in.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n');
}
in >> value;
}
Armen's solution is the correct answer, but I thought I'd throw out an alternative, based on jweyrich's caching idea. For better or for worse, this reads in the entire file at construction, but only saves the newline positions (doesn't store the entire file, so it plays nice with massive files.) Then you can simply call ReadNthLine, and it will immediately jump to that line, and read in the one line you want. On the other hand, this is only optimal if you want to get only a fraction of the lines at a time, and the line numbers are not known at compile time.
class TextFile {
std::ifstream file_stream;
std::vector<std::ifstream::streampos> linebegins;
TextFile& operator=(TextFile& b) = delete;
public;
TextFile(std::string filename)
:file_stream(filename)
{
//this chunk stolen from Armen's,
std::string s;
//for performance
s.reserve(some_reasonable_max_line_length);
while(file_stream) {
linebegins.push_back(file_stream.tellg());
std::getline(file_stream, s);
}
}
TextFile(TextFile&& b)
:file_stream(std::move(b.file_stream)),
:linebegins(std::move(b.linebegins))
{}
TextFile& operator=(TextFile&& b)
{
file_stream = std::move(b.file_stream);
linebegins = std::move(b.linebegins);
}
std::string ReadNthLine(int N) {
if (N >= linebegins.size()-1)
throw std::runtime_error("File doesn't have that many lines!");
std::string s;
// clear EOF and error flags
file_stream.clear();
file_stream.seekg(linebegins[N]);
std::getline(file_stream, s);
return s;
}
};
It's certainly possible. There are (n-1) '\n' characters preceding the nth line. Read lines until you reach the one you're looking for. You can do this on the fly without storing anything except the current line being considered.

How to count lines of a file in C++?

How can I count lines using the standard classes, fstream and ifstream?
How about this :-
std::ifstream inFile("file");
std::count(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(inFile),
std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(), '\n');
You read the file line by line.
Count the number of lines you read.
This is the correct version of Craig W. Wright's answer:
int numLines = 0;
ifstream in("file.txt");
std::string unused;
while ( std::getline(in, unused) )
++numLines;
kernel methods following #Abhay
A complete code I've done :
#include <fstream>
std::size_t count_line(std::istream &is) {
// skip when is not open or got bad
if (!is || is.bad()) { return 0; }
// save state
auto state_backup = is.rdstate();
// clear state
is.clear();
auto pos_backup = is.tellg();
is.seekg(0);
size_t line_cnt;
size_t lf_cnt = std::count(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(is), std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(), '\n');
line_cnt = lf_cnt;
// if the file is not end with '\n' , then line_cnt should plus 1
// but we should check whether file empty firstly! or it will raise bug
if (is.tellg() != 0) {
is.unget();
if (is.get() != '\n') { ++line_cnt; }
}
// recover state
is.clear() ; // previous reading may set eofbit
is.seekg(pos_backup);
is.setstate(state_backup);
return line_cnt;
}
it will not change the origin file stream state and including '\n'-miss situation processing for the last line.
Thanks #masoomyf for pointing my bug and I was too stupid to figure it out!
int aNumOfLines = 0;
ifstream aInputFile(iFileName);
string aLineStr;
while (getline(aInputFile, aLineStr))
{
if (!aLineStr.empty())
aNumOfLines++;
}
return aNumOfLines;
This works for me:
std::ifstream fin{"source.txt"};
std::count(std::istream_iterator<char>(fin >> std::noskipws), {}, '\n');
int numLines = 0;
ifstream in("file.txt");
//while ( ! in.eof() )
while ( in.good() )
{
std::string line;
std::getline(in, line);
++numLines;
}
There is a question of how you treat the very last line of the file if it does not end with a newline. Depending upon what you're doing you might want to count it and you might not. This code counts it.
See: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/getline/
Divide the file size by the average number of characters per line!