Write contents of array to a text file

Question

I want to write the contents of an array to a text file in my iPhone application. I can load the array from the text file but i want to allow deleting of content through the array and again write the contents to the text file. How can I achieve this? Or simply if anyone can guide me how to delete the last word of a text file would also be helpful.
EDIT :- basically i want to delete the last word in a text file. can you help me with the logic to achieve that .

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 08 '14 at 11:17

4

Write the contents of your original array as shown below:

[firstArray writeToFile:@"/Users/sample/Untitled.txt" atomically:YES];

Whenever you want to retrieve and modify the array, retrieve the contents of the file int an NSMutableArray:

NSMutableArray *myArr = [NSMutableArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:@"/Users/sample/Untitled.txt"];
[myArr removeLastObject];  //Any modification you wanna do
[myArr writeToFile:@"/Users/sample/Untitled.txt" atomically:YES];

edited Apr 08 '14 at 11:17

answered Jan 06 '12 at 06:37

Shanti K

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its stored in this format ` one two three ` – Bonnie Jan 06 '12 at 07:31
@Bonnie, the format is OK, the other method in the answer reads it back in as an array of strings. Unless you need the file to be in a particular format? – jrturton Jan 06 '12 at 07:35
@jrturton , i need it to be in plain text format, for using it further, basically i want to delete the last word in a text file. can you help me achieve that – Bonnie Jan 06 '12 at 09:11

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 06 '12 at 06:31

2

There is method in NSArray to write the array into a file.

- (BOOL)writeToFile:(NSString *)path atomically:(BOOL)flag

Please check the Apple documentation

answered Jan 06 '12 at 06:31

Ilanchezhian

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thanks that helped a little but the array is written in xml format here's how it is saved

one
two three i only want the string to be written, will i have to use an xml parser ? its much more trouble, is there a workaround ? – Bonnie Jan 06 '12 at 07:25

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 09 '12 at 09:25

the approach in other answers works bu the file is written in a XML format. to simply write the contents of the array in a text file , I first Appended all the strings of the array into a large string then write that string into the text file .below is the code i used for that

NSString *stringToWrite=[[NSString alloc]init];

for (int i=0; i<[stringArray count]; i++)

{
stringToWrite=[stringToWrite stringByAppendingString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ ",[stringArray objectAtIndex:i]]];

}

[stringToWrite writeToFile:textFilePath atomically:YES encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:nil];

this will write the contents of the array in plain text format.

Write contents of array to a text file

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