Array of strings.

[don0369]

Hello everyone this is my first post.

My problem is reading from a text file. The file is in the format: name\tdouble\tdouble\tdouble int

Since I have no control over the format of the file and do not know the size, I first begin by counting the lines of the file(nLineCount2). My question is, is fscanf the best/easiest way to read this file?

Sample of my code:

FILE *f;
	f = fopen(sFileName.c_str(), "r");
	for(int i = 0; i < nLineCount2; i++)
	{
 		fscanf(f, "%s\t%lf\t%lf\t%lf %d", &name[0][i], &Data[1][i], &Data[0][i], &Data[2][i], nType[i]);
	}
	fclose(f);

The problem I'm running into is how to read the string in. I first made an array of strings, but fscanf needs character strings. Then I made a 2d character array. I can't seem to get either one to work and I'm wondering if fscanf is the way to go. Any input would be great. Thanks in advance.

[csurfer]

Well you don't even need to know the number of lines in the file.
Use this :

fstream f_ptr;
string str;
f_ptr.open(<filename>,ios::in);
while(!f_ptr.eof())
getline(f_ptr,str,<delimiter>);

This complies to your requirements when the fields are delimited by some value.

[vmanes]

Um, this is a C++ forum. You'll get more and better response in the C forum.

And, csurfer, using eof( ) in that manner is going to unreliable at the end of the file, last value read in could be processed twice. This has been amply discussed on the forum.

[csurfer]

Yes vmanes you are right. But the OP had to start somewhere so I thought this would be better to start with and later learning and bettering the code from his/her own mistakes.Even this could be a solution to start with :

while(f_ptr){....}

But best according to daniweb is to use this:

while(fgets(....)!=NULL){.....} //or to use
while(getline(....)!=NULL){.....}

Get more info here.

[don0369]

Thanks for the responses. My issue is not with how many lines are in the file, I already have that, it's reading the strings in the first column of the file that is giving me problems. I don't have to use fprintf. I posted here to see if there was a better/easier way to do what I'm trying to do in C or C++. Thanks again.

[csurfer]

Use getline(<fileptr>,<string/buffer to read the line into>,<delimiter>);

[don0369]

Use getline(<fileptr>,<string/buffer to read the line into>,<delimiter>);

Thank you. I'll give it a go.