Printing out blank spaces from a text file in C++ - c++

Question

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cctype>
#include <cmath>
#include <string>
#include <iomanip>
#include <fstream>
#include <stdio.h>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
ifstream file;
string filename;
char character;
int letters[153] = {};
cout << "Enter text file name: ";
cin >> filename;
file.open(filename.c_str());
if (! file.is_open())
{
cout << "Error opening file. Check file name. Exiting program." << endl;
exit(0);
}
while (file.peek() != EOF)
{
file >> character;
if(!file.fail())
{
letters[static_cast<int>(character)]++;
}
}
for (int i = 0; i <= 153; i++)
{
if (letters[i] > 0)
{
cout << static_cast<char>(i) << " " << letters[i] << endl;
}
}
exit(0);
}
#endif
Hi everyone, my current code counts the frequency of each letter from a text file. However, it does not count the number of blank spaces. Is there a simple way to printout the number of blank spaces in a .txt file?
Also, how come when I'm trying to access a vector item, I run into a seg fault?
For example, if I use:
cout << " " + letters[i] << endl;, it displays a segfault. Any ideas?
Thank you so much.

Answer 1

By default, iostreams formatted input extraction operations (those using >>) skip past all whitespace characters to get to the first non-whitespace character. Perhaps surprisingly, this includes the extraction operator for char. In order to consider whitespace characters as characters to be processed as usual, you should alter use the noskipws manipulator before processing:
file << std::noskipws;
Don't forget to set it back on later:
file << std::skipws;
What if you're one of those crazy people who wants to make a function that leaves this aspect (or in even all aspects) of the stream state as it was before it exits? Naturally, C++ provides a discouragingly ugly way to achieve this:
std::ios_base::fmtflags old_fmt = file.flags();
file << std::noskipws;
... // Do your thang
file.flags(old_fmt);

Answer 2

I'm only posting this as an alternative way of doing what you're apparently trying. This uses the same lookup table approach you use in your code, but uses an istreambuf_iterator for slurping unformatted (and unfiltered) raw characters out of the stream buffer directly.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <iterator>
#include <climits>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
if (argc < 2)
return EXIT_FAILURE;
std::ifstream inf(argv[1]);
std::istreambuf_iterator<char> it_inf(inf), it_eof;
unsigned int arr[1 << CHAR_BIT] = {};
std::for_each(it_inf, it_eof,
[&arr](char c){ ++arr[static_cast<unsigned int>(c)];});
for (int i=0;i<sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]);++i)
{
if (std::isprint(i) && arr[i])
std::cout << static_cast<char>(i) << ':' << arr[i] << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}
Executing this on the very source code file itself, (i.e. the code above) generates the following:
:124
#:4
&:3
':2
(:13
):13
*:1
+:4
,:4
/:1
0:3
1:2
2:1
::13
;:10
<:19
=:2
>:7
A:2
B:1
C:1
E:2
F:1
H:1
I:3
L:1
R:2
T:2
U:1
X:1
[:8
]:8
_:10
a:27
b:1
c:19
d:13
e:20
f:15
g:6
h:5
i:42
l:6
m:6
n:22
o:10
p:1
r:37
s:20
t:34
u:10
v:2
z:2
{:4
}:4
Just a different way to do it, but hopefully it is clear that usually the C++ standard library offers up elegant ways to do what you desire if you dig deep enough to find whats in there. Wishing you good luck.