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This character in this file...I can't figure out what it is

Russell · 2002-02-06T19:58:41

I downloaded the official Scrabble word list to make a scrabble playing program, and there is a character separating the words, but I can''t figure out what it is. In Notepad the character shows up as one of those little boxes, and in Wordpad it acts as a newline, with each word on it''s own line. So I wrote a little C++ program to tell me what the ASCII value of the character was, and my program doesn''t even recognize it. It acts like it''s not even in the file. It only reads the alphabetic characters of the words. Here''s my program: #include <iostream> #include <fstream> using namespace std; int main(int argc, char * argv[]) { char input; int limit = 100; int n = 0; ifstream infile("ospd.txt"); for(n = 0; n < 20; n++) { infile >> input; cout << input << " (" << (int)input << ")" << endl; } return 0; } and the output... a (97) a (97) a (97) a (97) h (104) a (97) a (97) h (104) e (101) d (100) a (97) a (97) h (104) i (105) n (110) g (103) a (97) a (97) h (104) s (115) and the text from the file... aa aah aahed aahing aahs It prints out only the alph characters, and none of the special character that separates the words. You can get the file I''m using here. If you care to take a look for yourself. I just need some way to be able to determine where a word ends and where one begins. Thanks for your help. Russell

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by Russell February 04, 2002 06:42 PM

15 comments, last by Russell 22 years, 2 months ago

Spiral

122

February 05, 2002 01:20 AM

quote:
a hex editor is a viewer/editor which has binary and hex on it.

I know what a hex editor is, thankyou. And FYI most of them dont show the binary. I havent seen what that does, anyway. And any one worth its salt shows the ASCII too.

I wasnt saying your method didnt work, it just seemed a bit dirty/longwinded for what he wanted.

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CaptainJester

523

February 05, 2002 08:21 AM

On a side note, the reason you original program did not work was that when you open a file with streams, it defaults to ASCII mode of reading. When it does this, whitespace characters act as delimeters and are not read by the stream. Spaces, tabs, newlines and carriage returns are some examples of whitespace. To get your original program to work, you need to open the file as binary.

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redigjohn

122

February 05, 2002 08:26 AM

If i remember correctly the square box is the null character, you can reproduce it in a dos command line by pressing alt-255
I hope that helps, but it also signifies a carriage return in windows, so thats what most text editors read it as.

CGameProgrammer

640

February 05, 2002 10:41 AM

The square box is any character not part of the standard Windows character set. Windows only shows maybe 130 characters, and there are 256 possible ascii codes.

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Dredge-Master

175

February 05, 2002 11:03 AM

quote:Original post by Spiral

a hex editor is a viewer/editor which has binary and hex on it.

I know what a hex editor is, thankyou. And FYI most of them dont show the binary. I havent seen what that does, anyway. And any one worth its salt shows the ASCII too.

I wasnt saying your method didnt work, it just seemed a bit dirty/longwinded for what he wanted.

Hex editors are the long winded version. A hex editor should have the hex displayed and the binary loaded ascii set on the right. Many of the hex editors available only display ascii display characters, not their control characters.

Again, why the hell would a sane man waste time with a hex editor when all he has to do is use edit. - sorry about non-political correctness here.

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Edited by - Dredge-Master on February 6, 2002 8:58:41 PM

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Kylotan

10,510

February 05, 2002 08:29 PM

quote:Original post by CaptainJester
On a side note, the reason you original program did not work was that when you open a file with streams, it defaults to ASCII mode of reading. When it does this, whitespace characters act as delimeters and are not read by the stream. Spaces, tabs, newlines and carriage returns are some examples of whitespace. To get your original program to work, you need to open the file as binary.

That''s the second piece of incorrect advice you''ve posted today. Sorry to be picky, but when you give people the wrong answers, they just end up posting again a week later wondering why what you said doesn''t work.

All the binary flag does in iostreams is suppress conversion of special characters (eg. converting the new line and carriage return characters to match the OS standard), not change the formatted input and output (eg. << and >>) to stop skipping whitespace. There are special functions (get and getline, I believe) that will read in from a stream without skipping whitespace.

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CaptainJester

523

February 06, 2002 09:04 AM

quote:Original post by Kylotan
All the binary flag does in iostreams is suppress conversion of special characters (eg. converting the new line and carriage return characters to match the OS standard), not change the formatted input and output (eg. << and >>) to stop skipping whitespace. There are special functions (get and getline, I believe) that will read in from a stream without skipping whitespace.

The article I read on this made it sound like you didn''t have to use getline in binary mode. Unfortunately, I can''t find my C++ book and have to rely on information I can find on the Internet to learn what I don''t know.

quote:Original post by Kylotan
That''s the second piece of incorrect advice you''ve posted today. Sorry to be picky, but when you give people the wrong answers, they just end up posting again a week later wondering why what you said doesn''t work.

I would prefer to be corrected, than have the wrong information going around. Thanks and sorry for the wrong advice.

---
Make it work.
Make it fast.

"Commmmpuuuuterrrr.." --Scotty Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home

This character in this file...I can't figure out what it is

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