Reading a comma delimited file part by part

Question

I have an assignment from school and have to read a comma delimited file and put each value in to a char*.

Ex)

File contains:

5,Justin,19,123-4567,etc..

char * firstValue = 5;

char * secondValue = Justin;

char * thirdValue = 123-4567; etc..

I cannot use std::string since we haven't learned it yet. I am supposed to do it with ifstream or other file streams. I have no idea how to do this

Hint: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/istream/istream/getline/ Look at the second overload where you specify the delimiter - perhaps you could use `,` as the delimiter... — brettwhiteman, Apr 14 '15 at 22:58
Here's an example using a stringstream https://ideone.com/ptf0HO — brettwhiteman, Apr 14 '15 at 23:07

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 14 '15 at 22:51

For homework assignments iterating over the char array in a for loop and every time a comma is encountered splitting the string will work (I won't give the code because it is a good exercise to try to work out yourself). But for real world use you should be aware that the CSV format is considerably more complex. Consider multiline entries or entries with an escaped comma and how they break the above solution. I strongly recommend using libcsv for any real world CSV parsing.

Reading a comma delimited file part by part

1 Answers1