Unable to take input from a file containing string variables - c++

Question

I decided to make a phonebook in c++ and decided to take input of names, address and number from a file.
So I made a class called contact and declared the public variables name, address and number.
Using a constructor I initialized these to name="noname"(string), number=0(int), address="no address"(string)
Now my body of main goes as:
int main(){
contact *d;
d= new contact[200];
string name,add;
int choice,modchoice;//Variable for switch statement
int phno,phno1;
int i=0;
int initsize=0, i1=0;//i is declared as a static int variable
bool flag=false,flag_no_blank=false;
//TAKE DATA FROM FILES.....
//We create 3 files names, phone numbers, Address and then abstract the data from these files first!
fstream f1;
fstream f2;
fstream f3;
string file_input_name;
string file_input_address;
int file_input_number;
f1.open("./names");
while(f1>>file_input_name){
d[i].name=file_input_name;
i++;
}
initsize=i;
f2.open("./numbers");
while(f2>>file_input_name){
d[i1].phonenumber=file_input_number;
i1++;
}
f3.open("./address");
while(f3>>file_input_address){
d[i1].address=file_input_address;
i1++;
}
now when I later search for a particular entry by name, the name is displayed correctly but the phoneumber is returned as a garbage value and address as "Noaddress"
I dont understand why this is happening...
In case u want to look at entire code, do let me know....
This is how i search for a particular entry which returns the name if matched but returns garbage for phone number....
cout<<"\nEnter the name";//Here it is assumed that no two contacts can have same contact number or address but may have the same name.
cin>>name;
int k=0,val;
cout<<"\n\nSearching.........\n\n";
for(int j=0;j<=i;j++){
if(d[j].name==name){
k++;
cout<<k
<<".\t"
<<d[j].name
<<"\t"<<d[j].phonenumber
<<"\t"<<d[j].address
<<"\n\n";
val=j;
}
}
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

When your reading the file with the phone numbers
f2.open("./numbers");
while(f2>>file_input_name){
d[i1].phonenumber=file_input_number;
i1++;
}
You store the phone number in the string file_input_name but then you use a different var, file_input_number to store the information in the array d;

Answer 2

Hey guys I figured out the problem....
the problem is that i1 should be set to 0 after the second loop
and that the file taking input numbers should be f2.open("numbers") and not names....silly mistake!!

Answer 3

Since you are using C++, and not C, you should take advantage of the things that come with the language. Don't use arrays to store your data, use a std::vector. That way you don't have to remember how many things you have already put into the vector, because you can always ask the vector to tell you the size().
If I had to read in the three files I would go like this:
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <algorithm>
using std::cin;
using std::cout;
using std::fstream;
using std::string;
using std::vector;
class contact {
public:
string name;
string address;
int phone;
};
void print_contact(const contact &c) {
cout << "name " << c.name << " address " << c.address << " phone " << c.phone << "\n";
}
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
vector<contact> contacts;
string name;
string address;
int phone;
fstream f1("d:\\names.txt");
fstream f2("d:\\phones.txt");
fstream f3("d:\\addresses.txt");
// note that I am using getline() here.
while (getline(f1, name) && f2 >> phone && getline(f3, address)) {
contact c;
c.name = name;
c.address = address;
c.phone = phone;
contacts.push_back(c);
}
for_each(contacts.begin(), contacts.end(), print_contact);
// for the Windows console window
cout << "Press return to continue ...";
string s;
getline(cin, s);
return 0;
}