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Apr 18th, 2007

Address Book Data Base

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I have a data base of 2000 people the following orientation:

[phone-number] [Name] [address] [zipcode]

all seperated by spaces in a text file.

I want a way to read this data into a struct:

struct person
{
long phone number[10];
string name[30];
string address[100];
int zip[5];
}

The address and the person's name (michael j. smith)have spaces in them.

What would be the best way to go about reading the whole file into this struct? or should I use something else instead of a struct?

pulse0

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Apr 18th, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

a struct will be ok, but someone did not think very clearly when he/she created that database by making spaces the field separator when the field itself contains spaces. That will make it nearly impossible to read that file. Is there something else about the fields that distinguishes one field from another, such as are the fields all fixed-length, or surrounded by brackets as illustrated in the example you posted ?

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Apr 18th, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

You don't need a array of 5 ints to store a 5 digit integer. Change the struct to:

c Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
struct person
{
        long phone number;
         string name;
         string address;
         int zip;
}
struct person
{
        long phone number;
         string name;
         string address;
         int zip;
}

Abt reading from file and storing in struct. Post the code you write to do this and we'll help with any specific problem. See code snippets to get started with file reading and parsing.

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Apr 18th, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

No there are no brackets in that example I was just showing you how the file is. The width of phone number is 12 digits (with two -'s). The max width of name is 30. The max width of address is 100 and the zip is 5 digits long. I can try to place that in excel and format it manually and can insert a " | " character in between every field. Would that help?

pulse0

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Apr 18th, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

when you say "max width" does that mean, for example, the name is always 30 characters even when the actual name is less than that? If that's true then you can modify the structure like this.

c Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
struct person
{
    char phone_number[10];
    char name[30];
    char address[100];
    char zip[5];
};
struct person
{
    char phone_number[10];
    char name[30];
    char address[100];
    char zip[5];
};

Then read each line directly into one of those structure members

c Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
person p;
 
ifstream in("file.txt",ios::binary);
in.read(&p, sizeof(person));
person p;

ifstream in("file.txt",ios::binary);
in.read(&p, sizeof(person));

Or, an alternative is to read the line and chop it up into fields

c Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
struct person
{
    std::string phone_number;
    std::string name;
    std::string address;
    std::string zip;
};
 
person p;
std::string line;
ifstream in("file.txt");
 
getline(in,line);
p.phone_number = line.substr(0,12);
p.name = line.substr(13,43);
p.address = line.substr(44,144);
p.zip = line.substr(145);
struct person
{
    std::string phone_number;
    std::string name;
    std::string address;
    std::string zip;
};

person p;
std::string line;
ifstream in("file.txt");

getline(in,line);
p.phone_number = line.substr(0,12);
p.name = line.substr(13,43);
p.address = line.substr(44,144);
p.zip = line.substr(145);

Now just create a vector of person structs and put all the above (lines 13 thru 17) in a loop so that it reads the whole file. You may have to adjust the substrings a little because I may not have them right, but I think you get the idea.

Last edited by Ancient Dragon; Apr 18th, 2007 at 3:25 pm.

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Apr 19th, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

Awesome!!! you are a life saver!!!
Thank you sooo much!!! I'll probabble have more questions about this 'cause I've just started this project!!

THis is such a great web-resource!!! I love this website already!

Last edited by pulse0; Apr 19th, 2007 at 11:21 am.

pulse0

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Apr 23rd, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

few of the addresses are shorter than the specified length so when it reads to that max width it reads part of the next field in it also. I have delimited teh fields with a "|" character with no spaces in between.
every line is in the same syntax:
eg.
425-697-3142|john smith|123 main street #517|83210
313-111-2222|judy public|456 main street|90210

so any suggestions on reading the file in a way that every entry delemited by "|" is read into a different variable?

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Apr 23rd, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

>any suggestions on reading the file in a way that every entry delemited by "|" is read into a different variable?

Use getline to grab an entire line as already mentioned. Next, put it into a stringstream. Use getline again, but this time using '|' as a delimiter. Here's how the getline would look:

C++ Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
getline(myStringstream, variable_to_extract, '|');
getline(myStringstream, variable_to_extract, '|');

John A

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Apr 23rd, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

Also see this example and joe's explaination

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Apr 23rd, 2007

Re: Address Book Data Base

ok for some strange reason my borland c++ 5.02 compiler is not letting me define string type variables? i'm including <string.h>

am I doing something wrong?

Here are the errors i'm getting.

Info :Compiling C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\PULSE\DESKTOP\REGISTER\register.cpp
Error: register.cpp(7,6):Qualifier 'std' is not a class or namespace name
Error: register.cpp(7,8)

tatement missing ;
Error: register.cpp(9,22):'is_open' is not a member of 'ifstream'
Error: register.cpp(14,13):Call to undefined function 'getline'
Error: register.cpp(14,25):Undefined symbol 'line'
Warn : register.cpp(14,25)

tructure passed by value

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