I am maintaining a C++ method which one of my clients is hitting an issue with. The method is supposed to write out a series of identifiers to a file delimited by a new line. However on their machine somehow the method is writing a series of NULL's out to the file. Opening the file in a binary editor shows that it contains all zeros.
I can't understand why this is happening. I've tried assigning empty strings and strings with the first character set to 0. There is no problem creating the file, just writing the identifiers to it.
Here is the method:
void writeIdentifiers(std::vector<std::string> IDs, std::string filename)
{
std::ofstream out (filename.c_str(), std::ofstream::binary);
if (out.is_open())
{
for (std::vector<std::string>::iterator it = IDs.begin();
it != IDs.end();
it++)
{
out << *it << "\n";
}
}
out.close();
}
My questions: is there any possible input you can provide that method which will create a file which has NULL values in it?
Yeah, the following code quite clearly writes a series of NULL bytes:
std::vector<std::string> ids;
std::string nullstring;
nullstring.assign("\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 10);
ids.push_back(nullstring);
writeIdentifiers(ids, "test.dat");
Because the std::string container stores the string length, it can't necessarily be used in the same way as an ordinary C (null-terminated) string. Here, I assign a string containing 10 NULL bytes. Those are then output because the string length is 10.
Related
I have a small assignment which partly requires me to take inputs from a file in the form of strings and place them into char arrays so I can check if the string contains any '*' character at the end of it.
I have been able to extract the strings from the files successfully, however i have failed to find a way in which to place them in char arrays so i can process them.
I would be very grateful if someone would let me know how to place a string into char arrays using cstring library. Please keep in mind that the strings are taken from a file and not as user input.
some of the ways i tried is the following:
//Try 1
char CstringArray[] = LineFromFile;
//Try 2
char CstringArray[100] = LineFromFile;
//Try 3
ifstream Test("Test.txt");
Test>>CstringArray;
//Try 4
ifstream Test("Test.txt");
Test>>CstringArray[0];
Thank you very much
Since this is an assignment, your professor will probably not be happy with you using all of C++'s functionality, particularly if you don't understand it, but since it's a one liner I figured I'd tell you how I'd print all strings ending in an asterisks. Given that you have successfully opened the file to ifstream Test you can do:
copy_if(istream_iterator<string>(Test), istream_iterator<string>(), ostream_iterator<string>(cout, " "), [](const auto& i) { return !empty(i) && i.back() == '*'; })
EDIT:
I'm using an istream_iterator to read in each string in Test and istream_iterator, I'm operating on these values immediately, but if you needed to start by saving all the strings to a vector<string> you could also do this: vector<string> CstringArray{ istream_iterator<string>(Test), istream_iterator<string>() }
I'm using an ostream_iterator to directly stream out my selected strings rather than storing them
I'm using copy_if to iterate over all the strings that are streamed in, selecting only those that meet a given criteria
I'm using the lambda: [](const auto& i) { return !empty(i) && i.back() == '*'; } to conditionally select non-empty strings which end with an asterisks character
I have a file which contains records of students in the following format.
Umar|Ejaz|12345|umar#umar.com
Majid|Hussain|12345|majid#majid.com
Ali|Akbar|12345|ali#geeks-inn.com
Mahtab|Maqsood|12345|mahtab#myself.com
Juanid|Asghar|12345|junaid#junaid.com
The data has been stored according to the following format:
firstName|lastName|contactNumber|email
The total number of lines(records) can not exceed the limit 100. In my program, I've defined the following string variables.
#define MAX_SIZE 100
// other code
string firstName[MAX_SIZE];
string lastName[MAX_SIZE];
string contactNumber[MAX_SIZE];
string email[MAX_SIZE];
Now, I want to pull data from the file, and using the delimiter '|', I want to put data in the corresponding strings. I'm using the following strategy to put back data into string variables.
ifstream readFromFile;
readFromFile.open("output.txt");
// other code
int x = 0;
string temp;
while(getline(readFromFile, temp)) {
int charPosition = 0;
while(temp[charPosition] != '|') {
firstName[x] += temp[charPosition];
charPosition++;
}
while(temp[charPosition] != '|') {
lastName[x] += temp[charPosition];
charPosition++;
}
while(temp[charPosition] != '|') {
contactNumber[x] += temp[charPosition];
charPosition++;
}
while(temp[charPosition] != endl) {
email[x] += temp[charPosition];
charPosition++;
}
x++;
}
Is it necessary to attach null character '\0' at the end of each string? And if I do not attach, will it create problems when I will be actually implementing those string variables in my program. I'm a new to C++, and I've come up with this solution. If anybody has better technique, he is surely welcome.
Edit: Also I can't compare a char(acter) with endl, how can I?
Edit: The code that I've written isn't working. It gives me following error.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Note: I can only use .txt file. A .csv file can't be used.
There are many techniques to do this. I suggest searching StackOveflow for "[C++] read file" to see some more methods.
Find and Substring
You could use the std::string::find method to find the delimiter and then use std::string::substr to return a substring between the position and the delimiter.
std::string::size_type position = 0;
positition = temp.find('|');
if (position != std::string::npos)
{
firstName[x] = temp.substr(0, position);
}
If you don't terminate a a C-style string with a null character there is no way to determine where the string ends. Thus, you'll need to terminate the strings.
I would personally read the data into std::string objects:
std::string first, last, etc;
while (std::getline(readFromFile, first, '|')
&& std::getline(readFromFile, last, '|')
&& std::getline(readFromFile, etc)) {
// do something with the input
}
std::endl is a manipulator implemented as a function template. You can't compare a char with that. There is also hardly ever a reason to use std::endl because it flushes the stream after adding a newline which makes writing really slow. You probably meant to compare to a newline character, i.e., to '\n'. However, since you read the string with std::getline() the line break character will already be removed! You need to make sure you don't access more than temp.size() characters otherwise.
Your record also contains arrays of strings rather than arrays of characters and you assign individual chars to them. You either wanted to yse char something[SIZE] or you'd store strings!
I'm trying to write a program that reads in a CSV file (no need to worry about escaping anything, it's strictly formatted with no quotes) but any numeric item with a value of 0 is instead just left blank. So a normal line would look like:
12,string1,string2,3,,,string3,4.5
instead of
12,string1,string2,3,0,0,string3,4.5
I have some working code using vectors but it's way too slow.
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
string filename("path\\to\\file.csv");
string outname("path\\to\\outfile.csv");
ifstream infile(filename.c_str());
if(!infile)
{
cerr << "Couldn't open file " << filename.c_str();
return 1;
}
vector<vector<string>> records;
string line;
while( getline(infile, line) )
{
vector<string> row;
string item;
istringstream ss(line);
while(getline(ss, item, ','))
{
row.push_back(item);
}
records.push_back(row);
}
return 0;
}
Is it possible to overload operator<< of ostream similar to How to use C++ to read in a .csv file and output in another form? when fields can be blank?
Would that improve the performance?
Or is there anything else I can do to get this to run faster?
Thanks
The time spent reading the string data from the file is greater than the time spent parsing it. You won't make significant time savings in the parsing of the string.
To make your program run faster, read bigger "chunks" into memory; get more data per read. Research on memory mapped files.
One alternative way to handle this to get better performance is to read the whole file into a buffer. Then go through the buffer and set pointers to where the values start, if you find a , or end of line put in a \0.
e.g. https://code.google.com/p/csv-routine/
What I want to do:
Store records in a file. These records have two things.
time_t rt; //which stores the time the record was entered by the user
and along with this I want to store one string. But I don't know the length of the string.
It will be decided on run time and will depend on how many characters the user enters.
What needs to be done(According to me):
I have no clue. I know about dynamic memory allocation but did not know how to apply this to such a problem.
What I have tried:
I have tried to take one charachter at a time from the user and store it in a text file(Temporarily).
ofstream fileObject;
fileObject.open("temp.txt");
for(int j=0;;j++)
{
ch = _getche();
if( ch == 13) break; //user has pressed the return key
fileObject<<ch;
}
Then I found out the size of the file using the following code:
fileObject.seekp(0,ios::end);
long pos = fileObject.tellg(); //this is the size of the file
Then I declared a dynamic array of the size of the file.
char * entry;
entry = new char[pos]
Closed the file in the "out" mode and opened it again in the "in" mode.
fileObject.close();
ifstream fout;
fout.open("temp.txt"); //this is the name of the text file that i had given
Then character wise I copied the content of the text file into the character array:
for(int i=0;i<pos;i++)
fout>>info[i];
info[i] = '\0';
fout.close();
But now i dont know what to do further.
What I need you to help me with:
Help me to write this record as a class object into a binary ".dat" file.
My specs:
Windows XP SP 3
IDE: Visual C++ 2010 Express
What are the restrictions on the string? And how do you
recognize that the user has entered all of the data he wants in
the string?
If the string has to be a single line, and we can assume
"reasonable" length (i.e. it will easily fit into memory), then
you can use std::getline to get the string into an
std::string (for input), and then define the output format,
say "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S: user string\n" for
the file. If the user string can be several lines, you'll have
to define a protocol to input them (so you can know when
a single record is finished), and a more complex format for the
file: one suggestion would be to separate records by an empty
line (which means that the input cannot contain an empty line),
or to use a record header along the lines of: "%Y-%m-%d
%H:%M:%S line_count\n". (Subversion uses
a variant of this for it's commit messages. With a bit more
information, however, but the timestamp and the number of lines
are there.)
use std::string and std::getline, both from the <string> header
If you are using c++ then std::string is best.
std::string abc="";
I want to store one string. But I don't know the length of the string.
Then you need to use std::string and not a preallocated array of chars.
struct user_record
{
time_t rt; //which stores the time the record was entered by the user
std::string one_string;
};
Help me to write this record as a class object into a binary ".dat" file.
There are a number of serialisation options available to you. Perhaps the simplest is to write this as plain text using the standard stream operations:
std::ostream& operator <<(std::ostream& os, user_record const& ur)
{
return os << ur.rt << ' ' << ur.one_string;
}
std::istream& operator >>(std::istream& is, user_record& ur)
{
return is >> ur.rt >> ur.one_string;
}
For anything more involved than a single-line string, then perhaps you should investigate Boost's serialisation library.
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);