How to read in file containing blank space and punctuation?

Question

I have problem reading in the file that contain space ad punctuation. I use inFile >> letter to read the char and num. When I read file that is space or punctuation, it stop reading the text file.

Here's the text file I need to read

a 31
  12
e 19
i 33
o 41
u 11
, 2

Code:

char letter; 
int num; 

inFile.open(FILENAME.c_str());
  if(inFile.fail())
    cout << "Error..." << endl;
  while (inFile >> letter){
    inFile >> num ;
  }
  inFile.close();

Could anyone tell me how to fix it?

Thanks

Answer 1

I've compiled this code(MSVC2012):

char letter; 
int num; 
std::fstream inFile;

inFile.open("1.txt");
if(inFile.fail())
{
    cout << "Error..." << endl;
}
while (inFile >> letter)
{
    inFile >> num ;
    std::cout << letter << " | " << num << std::endl;
}
inFile.close();

And get this output:

a | 31
1 | 2
e | 19
i | 33
o | 41
u | 11
, | 2

If you have another compiler and it stops parsing, you can use std::getline and try use std::stringstream:

char letter; 
int num; 
std::fstream inFile;

inFile.open("1.txt");
if(inFile.fail())
{
    cout << "Error..." << endl;
}
while (!inFile.eof())
{
    std::string line;
    std::getline(inFile, line);
    std::stringstream stream(line);
    stream >> letter >> num;
    std::cout << letter << " | " << num << std::endl;
}
inFile.close();

But you still get the problem if you have a space in the begining of string. To avoid this, you should split string by spaces and parse the parts by stringstream or atoi