Hello, I do not really figure how to solve this problem. I am to make a database in a text file, and I would like to delete specific users in the file without affecting the rest of the file. To do so, I read the user list into a copied text file (Which seems to work somewhat fine), until I find the specific "ID" i want to delete. From here I continue to read the input file but avoid copying it over to the other text-file. It should then stop doing this when it finds another ID tag, but this seems to fail, Also, I want to copy the copied text file back to the original file because of the orignal filename is needed. Here it seems to fail, and the only output copied is "0x28fad4".





This is the function

void erase(std::string ID)
{
std::ifstream inFile("userlist.txt");
std::ofstream outCopy("copy.txt");
std::string buffer;
bool copyDone = false;
while (getline(inFile, buffer))
{
if (buffer == ("ID: " + ID))
{
while (getline(inFile, buffer) && buffer != "ID: ");
copyDone = true;
buffer.clear();
std::cout << "ID Found. Deleting user.";
}
outCopy << buffer;
std::cout << buffer << std::endl;
}
if (copyDone == false)
{
std::cout << "ID not present in userlist.";
outCopy.close();
inFile.close();
remove("copy.txt");
return;
}
inFile.close();
outCopy.close();
inFile.open("copy.txt");
outCopy.open("userlist.txt", std::ios::trunc);
if (outCopy.good())
std::cout << "Hej.";
outCopy << inFile;
inFile.close();
outCopy.close();
//remove("copy.txt");
}


here is userlist.txt, where ID: 111d should be deleted

Hello.
ID: 111d
Test.
ID: 202d
Should be kept safe from harm.


The copy.txt where everything concerning ID: 111d should have been removed ,but not IDs after,

Hello.

The userlist.txt after erase(string) now only contain,

0x28fad4



I guess the read loop inside the first while loop needs another condition, and the way I try to copy input from inFile to inCopy do not work, but I thought it could have been interesting to know, if it was possible to copy from the copied text back again without getline().

Regards,
Boooke

Im not sure if this is the issue but it appears that you are clearing the buffer then latter attempting to write the empty buffer when you find the ID you are looking for.


if (buffer == ("ID: " + ID))
{
while (getline(inFile, buffer) && buffer != "ID: ");
copyDone = true;
buffer.clear();
std::cout << "ID Found. Deleting user.";
}
outCopy << buffer;
std::cout << buffer << std::endl;

Did you mean to put the second part inside an else block?
outCopy << buffer;
std::cout << buffer << std::endl;

Yeah, I actually looked at that and it seemed at bit wrong, but I wasn't sure. It would be a good idea to put it into an else-statement. Thank you for the tip! I completely forgot about that one. But I still do not figure how I faulted the copy-section.


if (buffer == ("ID: " + ID))
{


C++ doesn't do native string concatenation like one would expect:

int main() {
const char* str = "Test: " + 3; // Pointer arithmetic, not concatenation
cout << '"' << str << '"' << endl;
}

Output:
"t: "

The C++ way would probably look something like this:

istringstream ss( buffer );
string prefix, extra;
int value;
ss >> prefix >> value;
getline( ss, extra );
if ( ss && prefix == "ID:" && extra.empty() ) {
// Do something with value
} else {
// Error
}


The plan is to read everything into a dynamic struct at some point. In the beginning would be a good idea. Maybe it would be much quicker to just edit the struct element that needs to be editted and then rewrite the whole "database", instead of having to edit the .txt and then read to the struct? Gonna try that, at least.

I know little of database-structuring. However, I will write the data to a copy.txt every time I change it in the struct and then I will read the copy to the now erased userlist.txt.. I am not sure if that is what you meant. But thank you for the ACID-model idea. If I have time, it would be a great idea to implement, also for exercising use in real projects.

I guess a lot of the erase() function i made is now inefficient, but the parts I need are actually still defunct, since I copying from text to text seems to give me some problems with the input.