How to write console output to a text file in cpp? - c++

I'm trying to write console data into a separate text file in cpp. Anybody help me with sample code.

There are various ways to do this. You could redirect it from the command line with programname > out.txt. Or you could use freopen("out.txt","w",stdout); at the start of your program.

If you want to write from your own process, I'd suggest a simple print method
void print(const string str, ostream & output)
{
output << str;
}
Then you can call
print("Print this", cout);
for console output, or
ofstream filestream("filename.out");
print("Print this", filestream);
to write into a file "filename.out". Of course you gain most, if print is a class method that outputs all the object's specific information you need and this way you can direct the output easily to different streams.

If you want to create a child process and redirect its output you could do something like this:
FILE* filePtr = popen("mycmd");
FILE* outputPtr = fopen("myfile.txt");
if(filePtr && outputPtr) {
char tmp;
while((tmp = getc(filePtr)) != EOF)
putc(tmp, outputPtr);
pclose(filePtr);
fclose(outputPtr);
}

bbtrb wrote:
void print(const string str, ostream &
output) {
output << str; }
Better than this is of course
ostream& output(ostream& out, string str) {out << str; return out;}
so that you can even have the manipulated output stream returned by the function.

smerrimans answer should help you out.
There is also the option to implement your own streambuf and use it with std::cout and std::cerr to store printouts to file instead of printing to console. I did that a while ago to redirect printouts to some sort of rotating logs with timestamps.
You will need to read up a little bit on how it works and this book helped me get it right.
If that's not what you're after it is a bit of overkill though.

Create file -> redirect input into file
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
int main()
{
std::string file_name;
std::string str;
std::cout << "Add file name:";
std::cin >> file_name;
std::cout << "Open file:" << file_name << std::endl;
std::ofstream oFile(file_name);
if (!oFile) {
std::cout << "ERROR: we can't open file:" << file_name << std::endl;
return 1;
}
else {
std::cout << "File is open: " << oFile.is_open() << std::endl;
}
std::cout << "Enter you sentence into file:\n";
getline(std::cin >> std::ws, str);
oFile << str;
oFile.close();
return 0;
}

Related

Can anyone explain the code about cin.tie() in C++?

// redefine tied object
#include <iostream> // std::ostream, std::cout, std::cin
#include <fstream> // std::ofstream
int main () {
std::ostream *prevstr;
std::ofstream ofs;
ofs.open ("test.txt");
std::cout << "tie example:\n";
*std::cin.tie() << "This is inserted into cout";
prevstr = std::cin.tie (&ofs);
*std::cin.tie() << "This is inserted into the file";
std::cin.tie (prevstr);
ofs.close();
return 0;
}
We can get same output if we remove the line:
std::cin.tie (prevstr);
Why is this?
std::cin.tie(prevstr) doesn't do anything in your original code because you didn't perform any operations on the stream afterward. *std::cin.tie() << "This is inserted into the file2" prints to stdout because std::cin.tie(prevstr) ties std::cin back to std::cout. prevstr points to the stream that std::cin was tied to before you set it to ofs, which is std::cout. If that line wasn't there it would have printed to the file.

Open a file with C++ and output the text that is in the file

I am trying to open a file with C++ and output the text that is in the file. I cannot seem to figure out what I am doing wrong. Here is what I have so far.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
#include <cstdlib>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
char fileName[50];
ifstream infile;
cout << "Enter the name of the file you would like to open: ";
cin.getline(fileName, 50);
infile.open(fileName);
if(!infile.is_open())
{
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
char line[75];
infile >> line;
while (infile.good())
{
cout << line << " ";
infile >> line;
}
system("pause");
return 0;
}
After I input the file name and press enter the CMD prompt just closes. I know that the file exist, but I cannot figure out why it is exiting. Obviously it is because of the exit command, but it should be open. What am I doing wrong?
You don't need to read/write the file line by line; C++ already supports to copy the file in one step. You also should use string instead of char[] for your strings; on one hand it means that you don't need to restrict the maximal length of your strings to some arbitrary length (what if your file's pathname has more than 50 characters, or the file has lines with more than 75 characters?
Note also that your file copying code is erroneous: It will remove all whitespace from the file, as infile >> line does not read a line (use readline for that), but a word, discarding whitespace.
Also, your code should give an error message if it couldn't open the file, instead of just silently returning (you do provide an error return, which is very good, but unless you call it from something that actually gives you feedback on the error return, you'll never learn about it.
Finally, the system("pause") should probably be done in an RAII class, so it is guaranteed to be exited on return (however, exit will not call destructors, so unless you want to use atexit, you should use return in `main`` instead). A better idea would, however, be to not put this into the code, but instead run it in a terminal that doesn't immediately close after the program finishes.
Here's a program that implements those suggestions:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <cstdlib>
int main()
{
// make sure that system("pause") is called on all exit paths
struct cleanup
{
~cleanup() { std::system("pause"); }
} do_cleanup;
// get the file name
std::string filename;
std::cout << "Enter the name of the file you would like to open: ";
std::getline(std::cin,filename);
if (!std::cin)
{
std::cerr << "Failed to read the file name.\n";
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
// open the file
std::ifstream infile(filename.c_str());
if (!infile)
{
std::cerr << "Could not open file: " << filename << "\n";
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
// print the file
std::cout << infile.rdbuf();
// close the file
infile.close();
if (!infile)
{
std::cerr << "Could not properly close file: " << filename << "\n";
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
There is no need to use a char[]. You've even #included string so just use that.
string fileName;
cout << "Enter the name of the file you would like to open: ";
cin >> fileName;
// or
// getline(cin, fileName);
ifstream infile(fileName);
if (infile.fail()) {
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
string line;
while (infile >> line) {
cout << line << " ";
}
system("pause");
return 0;
I also modified a few things to make it a bit cleaner.
Thanks for the help. Yes the file was in the wrong folder. It was a newb oversight!

How to show contents of the file in C++

I have some code here
https://github.com/Fallauthy/Projects/blob/master/cPlusPlusProjects/bazaPracownikow/bazaPracownikow/bazaPracownikow/main.cpp
And I have no idea how to show contents in my file. I mean i know how, but it doesn't show same I Have in file (in link). It show in next line. This code is responsible to load file
while (!baseFile.eof()) {
//wczytaj zawartosc pliku do zmiennej
std::string buffer;
baseFile >> buffer;
//wypisz
loadLineFromBase += buffer;
loadLineFromBase += " \n";
}
std::cout << loadLineFromBase << std::endl;
Unless I see all your code all I can do for you is give you a sample in return, I don't know what you're trying to do but it seems in this case you're looking for this.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string Display = "";
ofstream FileOut;
ifstream FileInput;
FileOut.open("C:\\Example.txt");
FileOut << "This is some example text that will be written to the file!";
FileOut.close();
FileInput.open("C:\\Example.txt");
if (!FileInput)
{
cout << "Error File not Found: " << endl;
return 1;
}
while (!FileInput.eof())
{
getline(FileInput, Display);
}
FileInput.close();
cout << Display << endl;
return 0;
}
Simply put if you're currently working wit ha text document
use getline()
When you use getline() it takes two arguments the first will be in this case your ifstream object, as in what you're using to open the file. The second will be the string you're using to store the contents in.
Using the method I outlined above you'll be able to read the entire file contents.
And please next time as it was said above outline your problem more in depth and if you provide us with all of your code we may better assist you!
Your snippet of code automatically add a newline to every string read from the input file, even if originally those were words separeted by spaces. Probably you want to keep the structure of the original file, so it's better to read one line at a time and, unless you need it for some other uses, print it out in the same loop.
std::string buffer;
// read every line of baseFile till EOF
while ( std::getline(baseFile, buffer) ) {
std::cout << buffer << '\n';
}

edit: trouble checking if file is empty or not, what am I doing wrong?

Edit: changed my question to be more accurate of the situation
I'm trying to open up a text file (create it if it doesnt exist,open it if it doesnt). It is the same input file as output.
ofstream oFile("goalsFile.txt");
fstream iFile("goalsFile.txt");
string goalsText;
string tempBuffer;
//int fileLength = 0;
bool empty = false;
if (oFile.is_open())
{
if (iFile.is_open())
{
iFile >> tempBuffer;
iFile.seekg(0, iFile.end);
size_t fileLength = iFile.tellg();
iFile.seekg(0, iFile.beg);
if (fileLength == 0)
{
cout << "Set a new goal\n" << "Goal Name:"; //if I end debugging her the file ends up being empty
getline(cin, goalSet);
oFile << goalSet;
oFile << ";";
cout << endl;
cout << "Goal Cost:";
getline(cin, tempBuffer);
goalCost = stoi(tempBuffer);
oFile << goalCost;
cout << endl;
}
}
}
Couple of issues. For one, if the file exist and has text within it, it still goes into the if loop that would normally ask me to set a new goal. I can't seem to figure out what's happening here.
The problem is simply that you are using buffered IO streams. Despite the fact that they reference the same file underneath, they have completely separate buffers.
// open the file for writing and erase existing contents.
std::ostream out(filename);
// open the now empty file for reading.
std::istream in(filename);
// write to out's buffer
out << "hello";
At this point, "hello" may not have been written to disk, the only guarantee is that it's in the output buffer of out. To force it to be written to disk you could use
out << std::endl; // new line + flush
out << std::flush; // just a flush
that means that we've committed our output to disk, but the input buffer is still untouched at this point, and so the file still appears to be empty.
In order for your input file to see what you've written to the output file, you'd need to use sync.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
static const char* filename = "testfile.txt";
int main()
{
std::string hello;
{
std::ofstream out(filename);
std::ifstream in(filename);
out << "hello\n";
in >> hello;
std::cout << "unsync'd read got '" << hello << "'\n";
}
{
std::ofstream out(filename);
std::ifstream in(filename);
out << "hello\n";
out << std::flush;
in.sync();
in >> hello;
std::cout << "sync'd read got '" << hello << "'\n";
}
}
The next problem you'll run into trying to do this with buffered streams is the need to clear() the eof bit on the input stream every time more data is written to the file...
Try Boost::FileSystem::is_empty which test if your file is empty. I read somewhere that using fstream's is not a good way to test empty files.

File Creation, Management and Removal in C++ using xCode

I am a fairly novice programmer, taking a few courses in my second year of highschool, and I have ran into a few problems. So let's get on with it.
Long story short, I have learnt how to create files like:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main(){
string Test;
ofstream file;
file.open("Cookies.txt");
if(file.is_open()){
file << "I have cookies! :3" << endl;
file.close();
}
else{
cout << "Error. No file has been created." << endl;
}
ifstream cookies;
cookies.open("Cookies.txt");
if(cookies.is_open()){
cout << cookies.rdbuf();
}
return 0;
}
But my question now is, how do I like "use" what is in this file? Like if I want to save variables, or import the "I have cookies! :3" to a string variable in the main program. Because it seems reasonable that it should be possible, I have just not found out how to yet.
Also, how do I delete files that I have created? Because something like
file.delete("Cookies.txt"); does not work at all.
Thank you for your answers in advance.
Best regards, Staggen.
You can read from a file in a similar manner to writing to it, using an ifstream (input filestream) instead of an ofstream (output filestream), and using the >> operator to read into variables. It does default to reading a single value at a time, and for strings that translates into "words":
So:
if (cookies.is_open())
{
std::string word;
while (cookies >> word) // read from the filestream into "line"
{
std::cout << "Read a word: " << line << std::endl;
}
}
This is a fairly good method for reading different data types.
To read the entire line, you can use std::getline() with the newline character as the delimiter:
if (cookies.is_open())
{
std::string line;
while (std::getline(cookies, line, '\n'))
{
std::cout << "Read a line: " << line << std::endl;
}
}
Deleting a file is an OS-level activity unrelated to reading/writing to files. The <cstdio> header includes std::remove() which will delete files.
#anderas is right; you should go through a tutorial on file I/O in order to learn or solidify the basics.