Re: Reading items from a text file to a vector

From:
Kai-Uwe Bux <jkherciueh@gmx.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:21:42 -0500
Message-ID:
<491e94a8$0$17068$6e1ede2f@read.cnntp.org>
zr wrote:

Hi,

i need to read a text file which contains a list of items, all of type
ItemType, separated by whitespace and newlines. For each line, there
will be a vector<ItemType> object that will store the integers read in
that line. There will be a single vector<vector<ItemType>> object that
will stores all of the vector<ItemType> objects mentioned in the
previous sentence.
I wrote a quick implementation and it seems to be working, but i would
like to hear some opinions on what may be incorrect or may be
improved, especially exception and runtime error handling. Assume that
the required operator>> in code line 13 is defined.

TIA

1 template <class ItemType>
2 void collect(istream& source, vector<vector<ItemType>>& db) {
3 while (source.good()) {
4 string s;
5 getline(source, s, '\n');
6 istringstream iss(s);
7 if (iss.bad() || 0==s.size())
8 break;
9 vector<ItemType> t;
10
11 while (iss.good()) {
12 ItemType item;
13 iss >> item;
14 t.push_back(item);
15 }
16 db.push_back(t);
17 }
18}


You have received some suggestions so far. The following is radically
different: (a) globally and (b) locally.

(a) The two problems of converting a single line and converting a whole file
are intermingled in your solution. I suggest taking those issues apart.
Also, you deal with vectors of vectors specifically. I think, one can be
more general.

(b) Just for fun, I used iterators and standard algorithms. Two different
methods of error reporting are employed: exceptions if there is no stream
to return or the status bits of the stream if present.

Here goes:

#include <iostream>
#include <istream>
#include <string>
#include <iterator>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
#include <sstream>
#include <stdexcept>

struct line : public std::string {};

std::istream & operator>> ( std::istream & istr, line & l ) {
  return ( std::getline( istr, l ) );
}

template < typename Sequence >
Sequence scan_line ( std::string const & l ) {
  std::istringstream istr ( l );
  Sequence result;
  typedef typename Sequence::value_type value_type;
  std::copy( std::istream_iterator< value_type >( istr ),
             std::istream_iterator< value_type >(),
             std::back_inserter( result ) );
  if ( ! istr.eof() || istr.bad() ) {
    throw ( std::invalid_argument( "line invalid\n" ) );
  }
  return ( result );
}

template < typename Sequence >
std::istream & collect ( std::istream & istr, Sequence & seq ) {
  typedef typename Sequence::value_type value_type;
  std::transform( std::istream_iterator< line >( istr ),
                  std::istream_iterator< line >(),
                  std::back_inserter( seq ),
                  & scan_line< value_type > );
  return ( istr );
}

int main ( void ) {
  std::vector< std::vector<int> > ivv;
  try {
    collect( std::cin, ivv );
    if ( std::cin.eof() && ! std::cin.bad() ) {
      for ( unsigned long n = 0; n < ivv.size(); ++n ) {
        for ( unsigned long m = 0; m < ivv[n].size(); ++m ) {
          std::cout << ivv[n][m] << " ";
        }
        std::cout << "\n";
      }
    } else {
      std::cerr << "File format error\n";
    }
  }
  catch ( std::invalid_argument const & i ) {
    std::cerr << i.what();
  }
}

BTW: I do not claim that this is "better". I just think you should know that
there are many ways to go about this.

Best

Kai-Uwe Bux

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