Reading Comma Delimited Text File Into Array

Question

I am trying to write a program in C++ that emulates a college enrollment system, where the student enters their ID, and the program searches a text file for their information, a

Answer 1

split(string, seperator)

split("918273645,Steve,Albright,ITCS2530,MATH210,ENG140", ",")
split("123456789,Kim,Murphy,ITCS2530,MATH101", ",")
split("213456789,Dean,Bowers,ITCS2530,ENG140", ",")
split("219834765,Jerry,Clark,MGMT201,MATH210", ",")

I know very little C++, but I remember this command.

Answer 2

The problem is that std::getline takes exactly one character as a delimiter. It defaults to a newline but if you use another character then newline is NOT a delimiter any more and so you end up with newlines in your text.

The answer is to read the entire line into a string using std::getline with the default (newline) delimiter and then use a string stream to hold that line of text so you can call std::getline with a comma as a delimiter.

Something like this:

#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

int main()
{
    std::ifstream inFile("registration.txt");
    if (inFile.is_open())
    {
        std::string line;
        while( std::getline(inFile,line) )
        {
            std::stringstream ss(line);

            std::string ID, fname, lname;
            std::getline(ss,ID,',');    std::cout<<"\""<<ID<<"\"";
            std::getline(ss,fname,','); std::cout<<", \""<<fname<<"\"";
            std::getline(ss,lname,','); std::cout<<", \""<<lname<<"\"";

            std::vector<std::string> enrolled;
            std::string course;
            while( std::getline(ss,course,',') )
            {
                 enrolled.push_back(course); std::cout<<", \""<<course<<"\"";
            }
            std::cout<<"\n";
        }
    }
    return 0;
}

In this example I am writing the text to the screen surrounded by quotes so you can see what is read.