okay i'm stumped on how to do this. I managed to get to the line I want to replace but i don't know how to replace it.
say a file called file.txt containts this:
1
2
3
4
5
and I want to replace line 3 so that it says 4 instead of 3. How can I do this?
#include <Windows.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
fstream file;
string line;
int main(){
file.open("file.txt");
for(int i=0;i<2;i++){
getline(file,line);
}
getline(file,line);
//how can i replace?
}
Assuming you have opened a file in read/write mode you can switch between reading and writing by seeking, including seeking to the current position. Note, however, that written characters overwrite the existing characters, i.e., the don't insert new characters. For example, this could look like this:
std::string line;
while (std::getline(file, line) && line != end) {
}
file. seekp(-std::ios::off_type(line.size()) - 1, std::ios_base::cur);
file << 'x';
Even if you are at the right location seeking is needed to put the stream into an unbound state. Trying to switch between reading and writing without seeking causes undefined behavior.
The usual approach is to read from one file while writing to another. That way you can replace whatever you want, without having to worry about whether it's the same size as the data it's replacing.
Related
I am reading the contents of a file like this:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
char line[256];
ifstream infile(filename, ios::in);
if(infile){
while (infile.getline(line, 256)) {
std::cout << line << std::endl;
}
}
In the while-loop I want to do some things but only in all n-1 iterations, not in the very last iteration (line of the file)...so I thought of something like infile.hasNextLine() but unforunately I were not able to find something doing this.
How can this behaviour be achieved in C++?
Is counting the lines in the file the only way to do this?
You can use peek():
if (infile.peek()!=EOF)
...
If you have read the last line, there's nothing more to read and peek() will return EOF. Inversely, if peek() returns something else, it means that there is still data to read so a next line.
An alternative way is doing what you want to do in the 2-n iterations and don't do it in the first iteration. I am guessing you want to do some stuff between two lines?
I want write code to find words in a file and replace words.
I open file, next I find word. I have a problem with replace words.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string contain_of_file,a="car";
string::size_type position;
ifstream NewFile;
NewFile.open("plik1.txt");
while(NewFile.good())
{
getline(NewFile, contain_of_file);
position=contain_of_file.find("Zuzia");
if(position!=string::npos)
{
NewFile<<contain_of_file.replace(position,5, a );
}
}
NewFile.close();
cin.get();
return 0;
}
How can I improve my code?
lose the using namespace std;
don't declare the variables before needed;
I think the English word you were looking for was content -- but I am not an English-native speaker;
getline already returns NewFile.good() in boolean context;
No need to close NewFile explicitly;
I would change the casing on the NewFile variable;
I don't think you can write to an ifstream, and you ought to manage how you are going to replace the contents of the file...
My version would be like:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <cstdio>
int main() {
std::rename("plik1.txt", "plik1.txt~");
std::ifstream old_file("plik1.txt~");
std::ofstream new_file("plik1.txt");
for( std::string contents_of_file; std::getline(old_file, contents_of_file); ) {
std::string::size_type position = contents_of_file.find("Zuzia");
if( position != std::string::npos )
contents_of_file = contents_of_file.replace(position, 5, "car");
new_file << contents_of_file << '\n';
}
return 0;
}
There are at least two issues with your code:
1. Overwriting text in a file.
2. Writing to an ifstream (the i is for input, not output).
The File object
Imagine a file as many little boxes that contain characters. The boxes are glued front to back in an endless line.
You can take letters out of boxes and put into other boxes, but since they are glued, you can't put new boxes between existing boxes.
Replacing Text
You can replace text in a file as long as the replacement text is the same length as the original text. If the text is too long, you overwrite existing text. If the replacement text is shorter, you have residual text in the file. Not good in either method.
To replace (overwrite) the text, open the file as fstream and use the ios::in and ios::out modes.
Input versus Output
The common technique for replacing text is to open the original file for *i*nput and a new file as *o*utput.
Copy the existing data, up to your target text, to the new file.
Copy the replacement text to the new file.
Copy any remaining text to the new file.
Close all files.
I have a bug with my code (the code at the end of the question). The purpose of my C++ executable is to read a file that contains numbers, copy it in a std::vector and
then just print the contents in the stdout? Where is the problem? (atoi?)
I have a simple text file that contains the following numbers (each line has one number)
mini01:algorithms ios$ cat numbers.txt
1
2
3
4
5
When I execute the program I receive one more line:
mini01:algorithms ios$ ./a.out
1
2
3
4
5
0
Why I get the 6th line in the stdout?
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
void algorithm(std::vector<int>& v) {
for(int i=0; i < v.size(); i++) {
cout << v[i] << endl;
}
}
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
string line;
std::vector<int> vector1;
ifstream myfile("numbers.txt");
if ( myfile.is_open()) {
while( myfile.good() )
{
getline(myfile, line);
vector1.push_back(atoi(line.c_str()));
}
myfile.close();
}
else {
cout << "Unable to open file" << endl;
}
algorithm(vector1);
return 0;
}
You should not use while (myfile.good()), as it will loop once to many.
Instead use
while (getline(...))
The reason you can't use the flags to check for looping, is that they don't get set until after an input/output operation notices the problem (error or end-of-file).
Don't use good() as the condition of your extraction loop. It does not accurately indicate whether the next read will succeed or not. Move your call to getline into the condition:
while(getline(myfile, line))
{
vector1.push_back(atoi(line.c_str()));
}
The reason it is failing in this particular case is because text files typically have an \n at the end of the file (that is not shown by text editors). When the last line is read, this \n is extracted from the stream. Yes, that may be the very last character in the file, but getline doesn't care to look any further than the \n it has extracted. It's done. It does not set the EOF flag or do anything else to cause good() to return false.
So at the next iteration, good() is still true, the loop continues and getline attempts to extract from the file. However, now there's nothing left to extract and you just get line set to an empty string. This then gets converted to an int and pushed into the vector1, giving you the extra value.
In fact, the only robust way to check if there is a problem with extraction is to check the stream's status bits after extracting. The easiest way to do this is to make the extraction itself the condition.
You read one too many lines, since the condition while is false AFTER you had a "bad read".
Welcome to the wonderful world of C++. Before we go to the bug first, I would advise you to drop the std:: namespace resolution before defining or declaring a vector as you already have
using namespace::std;
A second advise would be to use the pre increment operator ++i instead of i++ wherever feasible. You can see more details on that here.
Coming to your problem in itself, the issue is an empty new line being read at the end of file. A simple way to avoid this would be to check the length of line before using it.
getline(myfile, line);
if (line.size()) {
vector1.push_back(atoi(line.c_str()));
}
This would enable your program now to read a file interspersed with empty lines. To be further foolproof you can check the line read for presence of any non numeric characters before using atoi on it. However the best solution as mentioned would be use to read the line read to the loop evaluation.
I've never used dirent.h before. I was using istringstream to read through text files (singular), but have needed to try to revise the program to read in multiple text files in a directory. This is where I tried implementing dirent, but it's not working.
Maybe I can't use it with the stringstream? Please advise.
I've taken out the fluffy stuff that I'm doing with the words for readability. This was working perfectly for one file, until I added the dirent.h stuff.
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream> // for istringstream
#include <fstream>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <dirent.h>
void main(){
string fileName;
istringstream strLine;
const string Punctuation = "-,.;:?\"'!##$%^&*[]{}|";
const char *commonWords[] = {"AND","IS","OR","ARE","THE","A","AN",""};
string line, word;
int currentLine = 0;
int hashValue = 0;
//// these variables were added to new code //////
struct dirent *pent = NULL;
DIR *pdir = NULL; // pointer to the directory
pdir = opendir("documents");
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
while(pent = readdir(pdir)){
// read in values line by line, then word by word
while(getline(cin,line)){
++currentLine;
strLine.clear();
strLine.str(line);
while(strLine >> word){
// insert the words into a table
}
} // end getline
//print the words in the table
closedir(pdir);
}
You should be using int main() and not void main().
You should be error checking the call to opendir().
You will need to open a file instead of using cin to read the contents of the file. And, of course, you will need to ensure that it is closed appropriately (which might be by doing nothing and letting a destructor do its stuff).
Note that the file name will be a combination of the directory name ("documents") and the file name returned by readdir().
Note too that you should probably check for directories (or, at least, for "." and "..", the current and parent directories).
The book "Ruminations on C++" by Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo has a chapter that discusses how to wrap the opendir() family of functions in C++ to make them behave better for a C++ program.
Heather asks:
What do I put in getline() instead of cin?
The code at the moment reads from standard input, aka cin at the moment. That means that if you launch your program with ./a.out < program.cpp, it will read your program.cpp file, regardless of what it finds in the directory. So, you need to create a new input file stream based on the file you've found with readdir():
while (pent = readdir(pdir))
{
...create name from "documents" and pent->d_name
...check that name is not a directory
...open the file for reading (only) and check that it succeeded
...use a variable such as fin for the file stream
// read in values line by line, then word by word
while (getline(fin, line))
{
...processing of lines as before...
}
}
You probably can get away with just opening the directories since the first read operation (via getline()) will fail (but you should probably arrange to skip the . and .. directory entries based on their name). If fin is a local variable in the loop, then when the outer loop cycles around, fin will be destroyed, which should close the file.
Hi I have a file with some text in it. Is there some easy way to get the number of lines in the file without traversing through the file?
I also need to put the lines of the file into a vector. I am new to C++ but I think vector is like ArrayList in java so I wanted to use a vector and insert things into it. So how would I do it?
Thanks.
There is no way of finding the number of lines in a file without reading it. To read all lines:
1) create a std::vector of std::string
3 ) open a file for input
3) read a line as a std::string using getline()
4) if the read failed, stop
5) push the line into the vector
6) goto 3
You would need to traverse the file to detect the number of lines (or at least call a library method that traverse the file).
Here is a sample code for parsing text file, assuming that you pass the file name as an argument, by using the getline method:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
std::vector<std::string> lines;
std::string line;
lines.clear();
// open the desired file for reading
std::ifstream infile (argv[1], std::ios_base::in);
// read each file individually (watch out for Windows new lines)
while (getline(infile, line, '\n'))
{
// add line to vector
lines.push_back (line);
}
// do anything you like with the vector. Output the size for example:
std::cout << "Read " << lines.size() << " lines.\n";
return 0;
}
Update: The code could fail for many reasons (e.g. file not found, concurrent modifications to file, permission issues, etc). I'm leaving that as an exercise to the user.
1) No way to find number of lines without reading the file.
2) Take a look at getline function from the C++ Standard Library. Something like:
string line;
fstream file;
vector <string> vec;
...
while (getline(file, line)) vec.push_back(line);
Traversing the file is fundamentally required to determine the number of lines, regardless of whether you do it or some library routine does it. New lines are just another character, and the file must be scanned one character at a time in its entirety to count them.
Since you have to read the lines into a vector anyways, you might as well combine the two steps:
// Read lines from input stream in into vector out
// Return the number of lines read
int getlines(std::vector<std::string>& out, std::istream& in == std::cin) {
out.clear(); // remove any data in vector
std::string buffer;
while (std::getline(in, buffer))
out.push_back(buffer);
// return number of lines read
return out.size();
}