How to skip a string when reading a file line by line - c++

I have managed to skip the name section when reading values from a file with name and value pairs. But is there another way to skip the name section without declaring a dummy string to store the skipped data?
Example text file: http://i.stack.imgur.com/94l1w.png
void loadConfigFile()
{
ifstream file(folder + "config.txt");
while (!file.eof())
{
file >> skip;
file >> screenMode;
if (screenMode == "on")
notFullScreen = 0;
else if (screenMode == "off")
notFullScreen = 1;
file >> skip;
file >> playerXPosMS;
file >> skip;
file >> playerYPosMS;
file >> skip;
file >> playerGForce;
}
file.close();
}

You can use std::cin.ignore to ignore input up to some specified delimiter (e.g., a new-line, to skip an entire line).
static const int max_line = 65536;
std::cin.ignore(max_line, '\n');
While many people recommend specifying a maximum of something like std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max(), I do not. If the user accidentally points the program at the wrong file, they shouldn't wait while it consumes an inordinate amount of data before being told something's wrong.
Two other points.
Don't use while (!file.eof()). It mostly leads to problems. For a case like this, you really want to define a struct or class to hold your related values, define an operator>> for that class, then use while (file>>player_object) ...
The way you're reading right now really tries to read a "word" at a time, not a whole line. If you want to read a whole line, you probably want to use std::getline.

Related

Fstream getline() only reading from the very first line of text file, ignoring every other line

I am working on a coding project where I sort and organize data from a text file, and I cannot get the getline() function to read past the first line.
The idea is to capture the entire line, split it into 3 sections, assign it to an object, then move on. I can do everything except get getline() to work properly, here is the snippet of code I am having trouble with:
ifstream fin;
fin.open("textFile.txt");
while (!fin.eof()) // while loop to grab lines until the end of file is reached
{
getline(fin, line);
fin >> first >> last >> pace; // assigning the data to their respective variables
ClassObject obj(first, last, pace); // creating an object with those variables
ClassVector.push_back(obj); // assignment object to vector
}
This has been the closest I have gotten to reading every line while also sorting the data into a vector, but as I mentioned before, getline() will read line 1, and skip the rest of the file (1000 lines).
what you can do is rather than using !fin.eof(). i prefer to use something similar to this:
ifstream file ( fileName.c_str() );
while (file >> first >> last >> pace ) // assuming the file is delimited with spaces
{
// Do whatever you want with first, last, and pace
}
The "While loop" will keep reading the next line until we reach the end of the file.
If the lengths of first, last, pace are constant, you can also just get the contents of the line (in a string variable) and use substring on it, but this only works in the specific case that the lengths are constant throughout the entire file.

C++ stringstreams skipping a character

I have a file which the first line reads ">FileName.txt". My goal is to read this line, and save "FileName.txt" to a variable called name. So I have:
ifstream file;
/* File opening stuff */
string line, name;
getline(file,line);
stringstream converter(line);
converter >> name;
This accomplishes saving ">FileName.txt" to the variable name, but I need to remove the '>' character. I am not sure if I should do that after this point, or if there is a way to skip over it entirely using the stringstream.
You can skip over it with the stream fairly easily:
char ch;
converter >> ch; // skip initial >
converter >> name; // now read the name
You can skip over it with the function ignore, add follow statement after stringstream converter(line); only need one line.
converter.ignore(line.length(), '>');

Duplicate Data when I retrieve the data from file in C++

First of all, there's an data inside my file...
1|Malaysia|UK|One-Way|20|6|20|6|2000|12|12|12|12|12|
The above data is the data inside my file
But when I cout the data, there's an duplicate data...
1|Malaysia|UK|One-Way|20|6|20|6|2000|12|12|12|12|12|
1|Malaysia|UK|One-Way|20|6|20|6|2000|12|12|12|12|12|
So what's the problem when I cout the data???
Here's the code....
void Flight::displayFlight(vector <Flight> &flightProfile)
{
string readFlightID, readPrice, readBusinessList, readBusinessWaitingList, readEconomicList, readEconomicWaitingList;
flightProfile.erase(flightProfile.begin(),flightProfile.end());
ifstream inFlight("Flight.txt");
if(inFlight.fail()) return;
while(!(inFlight.eof()))
{
getline(inFlight,readFlightID,'|');
istringstream(readFlightID)>>flightID;
getline(inFlight,departure,'|');
getline(inFlight,destination,'|');
getline(inFlight,flightType,'|');
getline(inFlight,readBusinessList,'|');
istringstream(readBusinessList)>>businessList;
getline(inFlight,readBusinessWaitingList,'|');
istringstream(readBusinessWaitingList)>>businessWaitingList;
getline(inFlight,readEconomicList,'|');
istringstream(readEconomicList)>>economicList;
getline(inFlight,readEconomicWaitingList,'|');
istringstream(readEconomicWaitingList)>>economicWaitingList;
getline(inFlight,readPrice,'|');
istringstream(readPrice)>>price;
getline(inFlight, day,'|');
getline(inFlight, month,'|');
getline(inFlight, year,'|');
getline(inFlight, hour,'|');
getline(inFlight, min,'|');
inFlight.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n');
cout<<flightID<<departure<<destination<<flightType<<businessList<<businessWaitingList<<economicList<<economicWaitingList<<price<<day<<month<<year<<hour<<min<<endl;
}
inFlight.close();
}
Your (and others) common mistake is that the eof-bit is only set on input operations (RTFM).
The correct way to read a file line by line would be to do:
if (myfile.is_open())
{
while ( getline (myfile,line) )
{
cout << line << endl;
}
myfile.close();
}
You always need to check after you read from a stream if the stream is in a good state! If reading of the data failed, e.g., because the end of the stream was reached, the stream will be in a fail state. For example
while (std::getline(inFlight, readFlightID)
&& std::istringstream(readFlightId) >> flightID
&& std::getline(inFlight, departure)
...
) {
// now process the read data
}
BTW, note that the trick using a temporary stream only works like this if the target type is a member of std::istream. If it is not, you'll need to extra a reference from the stream, e.g. using
std::istringstream("some text") >> std::skipws >> value
That's because you're not checking that your getline succeeds.
The last time through the loop, it probably fails (because
you've read all of the data), so you pick up the old values.
This is not the way to read line based input. For starters,
line based input should be read line by line:
std::string line;
while ( std::getline( inFlight, line ) ) {
// Parse line here...
}
There are many ways to parse the line. One of the most common
solutions is to put it into an std::istringstream and read
from that. That's probably overkill for what you're doing,
however; you need probably something like boost::split (which
you can knock up in less than an hour if you can't use Boost).
At any rate, while ( !someIStream.eof() ) is never correct.
Two other quick comments: you shouldn't define your variables
before you need them, and there's no real point in closing
inFlight if it's immediately going out of scope.

reading and filling separate variables from file

I am doing a homework assignment where we are to read company data from a file and then process it for errors.
What I have so far I think will work with the first line, but I'm not sure how to make it read each line after. Each line is a record with ID, name, and payments. Basically I want to know how I can skip to the next line after I've processed the first. I haven't included the error checking yet but I think it will be in the last do while loop after 1 record is read. If the information read into each variable is wrong I can check it and output it to either the summary file or error file.
void processFile()
{
string filename;
ifstream recordFile;
ofstream summary("summary.dat");
ofstream error("error.dat");
cout << "Please enter a filename\n";
do
{
cin >> filename;
recordFile.open(filename);
if (!recordFile.is_open())
cout << "No file by that name. Please enter another filename\n";
}
while(!recordFile.is_open());
int ID = 0;
string firstName;
string lastName;
double payment1, payment2, payment3 = (0.00, 0.00, 0.00);
string numberOfRecords;
getline(recordFile, numberOfRecords);
do
{
ws(recordFile);
recordFile >> ID;
recordFile >> firstName;
recordFile >> lastName;
recordFile >> payment1;
recordFile >> payment2;
recordFile >> payment3;
}
while(!recordFile.eof());
}
*edit : I found part of my problem, I actually need to skip the first line and read on from that point. The first line in each file has useless data in it.
Use the getline function on the ifstream object
Two things. The first is if you're going to have to read multiple
records, and each record is a new line, the best solution is almost
always to read line by line, using std::getline, and then use
std::istringstream to break up the line (record) into the desired
fields. This has the advantage of keeping your input synchronized, even
in case of errors; you don't have to worry about how much to skp ahead
or ignore.
The second point is that you're checking for eof(). This is almost
always an error; sometimes, it will lead you to reading one line too
many, and in other cases, of ignoring the last line or field. If the
input is successful (and you can only check for end of file after
trying to input beyond it), the stream will behave as true in a
conditional context; if not, it will behave as false. So your loop
should be:
std::string line;
while ( std::getline( recordFile, line ) ) {
std::istringstream record( line );
record >> ID;
if ( ! record ) ...
// ...
}
And one final comment: all of the >> operators strip leading spaces,
so you don't need your call to ws. On the other hand, with the above
schema, you might want to do something like:
if ( record >> ws && record.get() != EOF ) {
// Unexpected garbage at end of line...
}
at the very end of your loop, to verify that there isn't extra text.

getline() function bunches the headings together

The first row of my data file is the headers for the three (or four) columns of data:
%b02_a08 b02_a08_counts b02_a08_eu
As you can see, the columns are TAB delimited. When I use getline(), it mashes the whole line together. If I use getline(,,'\t'), it returns %b02_a08 for the line. I need the line separated out, because I read each header.
If anyone knows of a way to read the headers from a data file and put them into a vector<string> so that I can run Regex on them to find the one with "eu" in it, that is all I need to do. Well, that and read the columns of data, which I will probably run into the same TAB delimited problem, there.
Use the stream Luke...
as in,
// process the header
std::getline(some_input_stream, line))
{
std::istringstream str(line);
// Now reaad each field
str >> header_1 >> header_2 >> header_3;
if (str >> header_4)
{
// process the optional column
have_col_4 = true;
}
}
// Now to read the rows
while(some_input_stream >> col_1 >> col_2 >> col_3)
{
if (have_col_4)
some_input_stream >> col_4;
}
The last block can be done with std::getline too (i.e. read a line, construct a stream, then read from the stream), however this tends to be somewhat slower...