C++ Escape Phrase Substring - c++

I'm trying to parse web data coming from a server, and I'm trying to find a more stl version of what I had.
My old code consisted of a for() loop and checked each character of the string against a set of escape characters and used a stringstream to collect the rest. As I'm sure you can imagine, this sort of loop leads to being a high point of failure when reading web data, as I need strict syntax checking.
I'm trying to instead start using the string::find and string::substr functions, but I'm unsure of the best implementation to do it with.
Basically, I want to read a string of data from a server, different data, separated by a comma. (i.e., first,lastname,email#email.com) and separate it at the commas, but read the data in between.
Can anyone offer any advice?

I'm not sure what kind of data are you parsing, but it's always a good idea to use a multi layer architecture. Each layer should implement an abstract function, and each layer should only do one job (like escaping characters).
The number of layers you use depends on the actual steps needed to decode the stream
for your problem I suggest the following layers:
1st: tokenize by ',' and '\n': convert in to some kind of vector of strings
2nd: resolve escapes: decode escape characers
you should use std::stringstream, and process the characters with a loop. unless your format is REALLY simple (like only a single separator character, without escapes), you can't really use any standard function.

For the learning experience, this is the code I ended up using to parse data into a map. You can use the web_parse_resurn.err to see if an error was hit, or use it for specific error codes.
struct web_parse_return {
map<int,string> parsedata;
int err;
};
web_parse_return* parsewebstring(char* escapechar, char* input, int tokenminimum) {
int err = 0;
map<int,string> datamap;
if(input == "MISSING_INFO") { //a server-side string for data left out in the call
err++;
}
else {
char* nTOKEN;
char* TOKEN = strtok_s(input, escapechar,&nTOKEN);
if(TOKEN != 0) { //if the escape character is found
int tokencount = 0;
while(TOKEN != 0) {//since it finds the next occurrence, keep going
datamap.insert(pair<int,string>(tokencount,TOKEN));
TOKEN = strtok_s(NULL, escapechar,&nTOKEN);
tokencount++;
}
if(tokencount < tokenminimum) //check that the right number was hit
err++; //other wise, up the error count
}
else {
err++;
}
}
web_parse_return* p = new web_parse_return; //initializing a new struct
p->err = err;
p->parsedata = datamap;
return p;
}

Related

How can I read CSV file in to vector in C++

I'm doing the project that convert the python code to C++, for better performance. That python project name is Adcvanced EAST, for now, I got the input data for nms function, in .csv file like this:
"[ 5.9358170e-04 5.2773970e-01 5.0061589e-01 -1.3098677e+00
-2.7747922e+00 1.5079222e+00 -3.4586751e+00]","[ 3.8175487e-05 6.3440394e-01 7.0218205e-01 -1.5393494e+00
-5.1545496e+00 4.2795391e+00 -3.4941311e+00]","[ 4.6003381e-05 5.9677261e-01 6.6983813e-01 -1.6515008e+00
-5.1606908e+00 5.2009044e+00 -3.0518508e+00]","[ 5.5172237e-05 5.8421570e-01 5.9929764e-01 -1.8425952e+00
-5.2444854e+00 4.5013981e+00 -2.7876694e+00]","[ 5.2929961e-05 5.4777789e-01 6.4851379e-01 -1.3151239e+00
-5.1559062e+00 5.2229333e+00 -2.4008298e+00]","[ 8.0250458e-05 6.1284608e-01 6.1014801e-01 -1.8556541e+00
-5.0002270e+00 5.2796564e+00 -2.2154367e+00]","[ 8.1256607e-05 6.1321974e-01 5.9887391e-01 -2.2241254e+00
-4.7920742e+00 5.4237065e+00 -2.2534993e+00]
one unit is 7 numbers, but a '\n' after first four numbers,
I wanna read this csv file into my C++ project,
so that I can do the math work in C++, make it more fast.
using namespace std;
void read_csv(const string &filename)
{
//File pointer
fstream fin;
//open an existing file
fin.open(filename, ios::in);
vector<vector<vector<double>>> predict;
string line;
while (getline(fin, line))
{
std::istringstream sin(line);
vector<double> preds;
double pred;
while (getline(sin, pred, ']'))
{
preds.push_back(preds);
}
}
}
For now...my code emmmmmm not working ofc,
I'm totally have no idea with this...
please help me with read the csv data into my code.
thanks
Unfortunately parsing strings (and consequently files) is very tedious in C++.
I highly recommend using a library, ideally a header-only one, like this one.
If you insist on writing it yourself, maybe you can draw some inspiration from this StackOverflow question on how to parse general CSV files in C++.
You could look at getdelim(',', fin, line),
But the other issue will be those quotes, unless you /know/ the file is always formatted exactly this way, it becomes difficult.
One hack I have used in the past that is NOT PERFECT, if the first character is a quote, then the last character before the comma must also be a matching quote, and not escaped.
If it is not a quote then getdelim() some more, but the auto-alloc feature of getdelim means you must use another buffer. In C++ I end up with a vector of all the pieces of getdelim results that then need to be concatenated to make the final string:
std::vector<char*> gotLine;
gotLine.push_back(malloc(2));
*gotLine.back() = fgetch();
gotLine.back()[1] = 0;
bool gotquote = *gotLine.back() == '"'; // perhaps different classes of quote
if (*gotLine.back() != ',')
for(;;)
{
char* gotSub= nullptr;
gotSub=getdelim(',');
gotLine.push_back(gotSub);
if (!gotquote) break;
auto subLen = strlen(gotSub);
if (subLen>1 && *(gotSub-1)=='"') // again different classes of quote
if (sublen==2 || *(gotSub-2)!='\\') // needs to be a while loop
break;
}
Then just concatenate all these string segments back together.
Note that getdelim supports null bytes. If you expect null bytes in the content, and not represented by the character sequences \000 or \# you need to store the actual length returned by getdelim, and use memcpy to concatenate them.
Oh, and if you allow utf-8 extended quotes it gets very messy!
The case this doesn't cover is a string that ends \\" or \\\\". Ideally you need to while count the number of leading backslashes, and accept the quote if the count is even.
Note that this leave the issue of unescaping the quoted content, i.e. converting any \" into ", and \\ into \, etc. Also discarding the enclosing quotes.
In the end a library may be easier if you need to deal with completely arbitrary content. But if the content is "known" you can live without.

Reading from FileStream with arbitrary delimiter

I have encountered a problem to read msg from a file using C++. Usually what people does is create a file stream then use getline() function to fetch msg. getline() function can accept an additional parameter as delimiter so that it return each "line" separated by the new delimiter but not default '\n'. However, this delimiter has to be a char. In my usecase, it is possible the delimiter in the msg is something else like "|--|", so I try to get a solution such that it accept a string as delimiter instead of a char.
I have searched StackOverFlow a little bit and found some interesting posts.
Parse (split) a string in C++ using string delimiter (standard C++)
This one gives a solution to use string::find() and string::substr() to parse with arbitrary delimiter. However, all the solutions there assumes input is a string instead of a stream, In my case, the file stream data is too big/waste to fit into memory at once so it should read in msg by msg (or a bulk of msg at once).
Actually, read through the gcc implementation of std::getline() function, it seems it is much more easier to handle the case delimiter is a singe char. Since every time you load in a chunk of characters, you can always search the delimiter and separate them. While it is different if you delimiter is more than one char, the delimiter itself may straddle between two different chunks and cause many other corner cases.
Not sure whether anyone else has faced this kind of requirement before and how you guys handled it elegantly. It seems it would be nice to have a standard function like istream& getNext (istream&& is, string& str, string delim)? This seems to be a general usecase to me. Why not this one is in Standard lib so that people no longer to implement their own version separately?
Thank you very much
The STL simply does not natively support what you are asking for. You will have to write your own function (or find a 3rd party function) that does what you need.
For instance, you can use std::getline() to read up to the first character of your delimiter, and then use std::istream::get() to read subsequent characters and compare them to the rest of your delimiter. For example:
std::istream& my_getline(std::istream &input, std::string &str, const std::string &delim)
{
if (delim.empty())
throw std::invalid_argument("delim cannot be empty!");
if (delim.size() == 1)
return std::getline(input, str, delim[0]);
str.clear();
std::string temp;
char ch;
bool found = false;
do
{
if (!std::getline(input, temp, delim[0]))
break;
str += temp;
found = true;
for (int i = 1; i < delim.size(); ++i)
{
if (!input.get(ch))
{
if (input.eof())
input.clear(std::ios_base::eofbit);
str.append(delim.c_str(), i);
return input;
}
if (delim[i] != ch)
{
str.append(delim.c_str(), i);
str += ch;
found = false;
break;
}
}
}
while (!found);
return input;
}
if you are ok with reading byte by byte, you could build a state transition table implementation of a finite state machine to recognize your stop condition
std::string delimeter="someString";
//initialize table with a row per target string character, a column per possible char and all zeros
std::vector<vector<int> > table(delimeter.size(),std::vector<int>(256,0));
int endState=delimeter.size();
//set the entry for the state looking for the next letter and finding that character to the next state
for(unsigned int i=0;i<delimeter.size();i++){
table[i][(int)delimeter[i]]=i+1;
}
now in you can use it like this
int currentState=0;
int read=0;
bool done=false;
while(!done&&(read=<istream>.read())>=0){
if(read>=256){
currentState=0;
}else{
currentState=table[currentState][read];
}
if(currentState==endState){
done=true;
}
//do your streamy stuff
}
granted this only works if the delimiter is in extended ASCII, but it will work fine for some thing like your example.
It seems, it is easiest to create something like getline(): read to the last character of the separator. Then check if the string is long enough for the separator and, if so, if it ends with the separator. If it is not, carry on reading:
std::string getline(std::istream& in, std::string& value, std::string const& separator) {
std::istreambuf_iterator<char> it(in), end;
if (separator.empty()) { // empty separator -> return the entire stream
return std::string(it, end);
}
std::string rc;
char last(separator.back());
for (; it != end; ++it) {
rc.push_back(*it);
if (rc.back() == last
&& separator.size() <= rc.size()
&& rc.substr(rc.size() - separator.size()) == separator) {
return rc.resize(rc.size() - separator.size());
}
}
return rc; // no separator was found
}

Pull out data from a file and store it in strings in C++

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!

Detecting space in a file in c++

Hi i was just wondering if anybody could help me i am reading characters from a file then inserting them into a map i have the code working i was just wondering how do i detect if a space is in the file cause i need to store the amount of times a space occurred in a file any help would be great thanks.
map<char, int> treeNodes; //character and the frequency
ifstream text("test.txt");
while(!text.eof())
{
text >> characters;
//getline(text,characters);
cout << characters;
if(treeNodes.count(characters) == 0)
{
if(isspace (characters))
{
cout << "space" << endl;
}
else
treeNodes.insert(pair<char,int>(characters,1));
}
else
{
treeNodes[characters] += 1;
}
}
Formatted input, i.e. when using the right shift operator>>() skips leading whitespace by default. You can turn this off using std::noskipws but depending on what sort of things you want to read it won't be a very happy experience. The best approach is probably using unformatted input, i.e. something like std::getline() and split the line on space within the program.
If you just want to count the number of times any particular character occurred, you probably want to use std::istreambuf_iterator<char> and just iterate over the content of the stream (this code also omits some other unnecessary clutter):
for (std::istreambuf_iterator<char> it(text), end(); it != end; ++it) {
++treeNodes[*it];
}
BTW, you never want to use the result of eof() for something different than determining whether the last read failed because the stream has reached its end.
couldn't you just cast the char to an int and test if it is equal to the ascii value of a space?

Cleaning a string of punctuation in C++

Ok so before I even ask my question I want to make one thing clear. I am currently a student at NIU for Computer Science and this does relate to one of my assignments for a class there. So if anyone has a problem read no further and just go on about your business.
Now for anyone who is willing to help heres the situation. For my current assignment we have to read a file that is just a block of text. For each word in the file we are to clear any punctuation in the word (ex : "can't" would end up as "can" and "that--to" would end up as "that" obviously with out the quotes, quotes were used just to specify what the example was).
The problem I've run into is that I can clean the string fine and then insert it into the map that we are using but for some reason with the code I have written it is allowing an empty string to be inserted into the map. Now I've tried everything that I can come up with to stop this from happening and the only thing I've come up with is to use the erase method within the map structure itself.
So what I am looking for is two things, any suggestions about how I could a) fix this with out simply just erasing it and b) any improvements that I could make on the code I already have written.
Here are the functions I have written to read in from the file and then the one that cleans it.
Note: the function that reads in from the file calls the clean_entry function to get rid of punctuation before anything is inserted into the map.
Edit: Thank you Chris. Numbers are allowed :). If anyone has any improvements to the code I've written or any criticisms of something I did I'll listen. At school we really don't get feed back on the correct, proper, or most efficient way to do things.
int get_words(map<string, int>& mapz)
{
int cnt = 0; //set out counter to zero
map<string, int>::const_iterator mapzIter;
ifstream input; //declare instream
input.open( "prog2.d" ); //open instream
assert( input ); //assure it is open
string s; //temp strings to read into
string not_s;
input >> s;
while(!input.eof()) //read in until EOF
{
not_s = "";
clean_entry(s, not_s);
if((int)not_s.length() == 0)
{
input >> s;
clean_entry(s, not_s);
}
mapz[not_s]++; //increment occurence
input >>s;
}
input.close(); //close instream
for(mapzIter = mapz.begin(); mapzIter != mapz.end(); mapzIter++)
cnt = cnt + mapzIter->second;
return cnt; //return number of words in instream
}
void clean_entry(const string& non_clean, string& clean)
{
int i, j, begin, end;
for(i = 0; isalnum(non_clean[i]) == 0 && non_clean[i] != '\0'; i++);
begin = i;
if(begin ==(int)non_clean.length())
return;
for(j = begin; isalnum(non_clean[j]) != 0 && non_clean[j] != '\0'; j++);
end = j;
clean = non_clean.substr(begin, (end-begin));
for(i = 0; i < (int)clean.size(); i++)
clean[i] = tolower(clean[i]);
}
The problem with empty entries is in your while loop. If you get an empty string, you clean the next one, and add it without checking. Try changing:
not_s = "";
clean_entry(s, not_s);
if((int)not_s.length() == 0)
{
input >> s;
clean_entry(s, not_s);
}
mapz[not_s]++; //increment occurence
input >>s;
to
not_s = "";
clean_entry(s, not_s);
if((int)not_s.length() > 0)
{
mapz[not_s]++; //increment occurence
}
input >>s;
EDIT: I notice you are checking if the characters are alphanumeric. If numbers are not allowed, you may need to revisit that area as well.
Further improvements would be to
declare variables only when you use them, and in the innermost scope
use c++-style casts instead of the c-style (int) casts
use empty() instead of length() == 0 comparisons
use the prefix increment operator for the iterators (i.e. ++mapzIter)
A blank string is a valid instance of the string class, so there's nothing special about adding it into the map. What you could do is first check if it's empty, and only increment in that case:
if (!not_s.empty())
mapz[not_s]++;
Style-wise, there's a few things I'd change, one would be to return clean from clean_entry instead of modifying it:
string not_s = clean_entry(s);
...
string clean_entry(const string &non_clean)
{
string clean;
... // as before
if(begin ==(int)non_clean.length())
return clean;
... // as before
return clean;
}
This makes it clearer what the function is doing (taking a string, and returning something based on that string).
The function 'getWords' is doing a lot of distinct actions that could be split out into other functions. There's a good chance that by splitting it up into it's individual parts, you would have found the bug yourself.
From the basic structure, I think you could split the code into (at least):
getNextWord: Return the next (non blank) word from the stream (returns false if none left)
clean_entry: What you have now
getNextCleanWord: Calls getNextWord, and if 'true' calls CleanWord. Returns 'false' if no words left.
The signatures of 'getNextWord' and 'getNextCleanWord' might look something like:
bool getNextWord (std::ifstream & input, std::string & str);
bool getNextCleanWord (std::ifstream & input, std::string & str);
The idea is that each function does a smaller more distinct part of the problem. For example, 'getNextWord' does nothing but get the next non blank word (if there is one). This smaller piece therefore becomes an easier part of the problem to solve and debug if necessary.
The main component of 'getWords' then can be simplified down to:
std::string nextCleanWord;
while (getNextCleanWord (input, nextCleanWord))
{
++map[nextCleanWord];
}
An important aspect to development, IMHO, is to try to Divide and Conquer the problem. Split it up into the individual tasks that need to take place. These sub-tasks will be easier to complete and should also be easier to maintain.