how to replace a line with another/ c++ code - c++

Question

I am working on ubuntu. I have a file called test.txt. I would like to replace the second line with another line. How can I do that? I don't want to create a new file and delete the first one.
I would like to specify that the lenght of the new line is the same with the length of the ond one

Answer 1

Try something like:
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
int main() {
const int lineToReplace = 14;
std::fstream file("myfile.txt", std::ios::in | std::ios::out);
char line[255];
for (int i=0; i<lineToReplace-1; ++i)
file.getline(line, 255); // This already skips the newline
file.tellg();
file << "Your contents here" << std::endl;
file.close();
return 0;
}
Note that line can hold up to 254 bytes (plus the null terminator), so if your line takes more than that, adjust accordingly.

Answer 2

If the file is small enough you can read it into memory, do whatever modifications you want on the in-memory copy, and the write if back out.
Edit Code as requested:
// A vector to store all lines
std::vector<std::string> lines;
// The input file
std::ifstream is("test.txt")
// Get all lines into the vector
std::string line;
while (std::getline(is, line))
lines.push_back(line);
// Close the input file
is.close();
// All of the file is now in memory, each line a single entry in the vector
// "lines". The items in the vector can now be modified as you please.
// Replace the second line with something else
lines[1] = "Something else";
// Open output file
std::ofstream os("test.txt");
// Write all lines to the file
for(const auto& l : lines)
os << l << '\n';
// All done, close output file
os.close();

Answer 3

This is Python, but it's significantly more readable and terse for this purpose:
f = open('text.txt', 'w+') # open for read/write
g = tempfile.TemporaryFile('w+') # temp file to build replacement data
g.write(next(f)) # add the first line
next(f) # discard the second line
g.write(second_line) # add this one instead
g.writelines(f) # copy the rest of the file
f.seek(0) # go back to the start
g.seek(0) # start of the tempfile
f.writelines(g) # copy the file data over
f.truncate() # drop the rest of the file
You could also use shutil.copyfileobj instead of writelines to do block copying between the files.

Answer 4

Here's how I would do it, without a hard limit on the line length:
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
fstream file("test.txt",std::ios::in|std::ios::out);
string line;
string line_new="LINE2";
// Skip the first line, file pointer points to beginning of second line now.
getline(file,line);
fstream::pos_type pos=file.tellg();
// Read the second line.
getline(file,line);
if (line.length()==line_new.length()) {
// Go back to start of second line and replace it.
file.seekp(pos);
file << line_new;
}
return 0;
}