Reading input from text file to array in c++

Question

Alright, be gentle, since I\'m very much a novice to programming. So far I\'ve only studied C++ and I\'m running Visual Studio 2010 as my compiler. For this program, I\'m trying

Answer 1

fstream's getline function has these signatures.

std::istream& getline (char* s, streamsize n );
std::istream& getline (char* s, streamsize n, char delim );

In your code...

string nameAr[EMP_NUM];
// stuff...
inFile.getline(nameAr[i], EMP_NUM, "*");

You are trying to use a std::string where getline wants a char* - you cannot convert from string to a char* like this.

One approach is you can use a character buffer to store the contents of getline, like this.

const int BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;
char buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
inFile.getline(buffer, BUFFER_SIZE, '*');
// more stuff...

A better solution

I'd recommend using std::getline from <string>, as you can use string types instead of C-strings.

#include <string>

// stuff...
std::getline(inFile, nameAr[i], '*');

edit Links for you since you are learning

• std::getline function example
• std::getline function description

Answer 2

It appears that you have a pointer problem. You are trying to store a pointer to a char array in nameAr[], correct? What you need to do is define nameAr[] as an array of pointers to char arrays so that you can store a pointer to each name in the nameAr[] array.

Try using this for your name array instead of nameAr[].

nameAr = new char*[EMP_NUM];