data written to text file is partially corrupt and irretrievable

Question

template <class T>
void savetext(T *a, char const *b) //writes to text file inside .sln however the text file is corrupt
{
    ofstream fout(b, ios::out);
    for (int i = 0; a[i] != '\0'; i++)
        fout << a[i] << endl;
    cout << "Text file successfully written to." << endl;
}

template <class T>
void gettext(T *a, char const *b) //this is where the error occurs: inside the text file it puts the right values along with piles of junk. Why is this? 
{

    ifstream fin(b, ios::in);
    if (fin.is_open())
    {
    cout << "File opened. Now displaying .txt data..." << endl; 
        for (int i = 0; a[i]!= '\0'; i++)
        {
            fin >> a[i];
        }
        cout << "Data successfully read." << endl;
    }
    else 
    {
        cout << "File could not be opened." << endl;
    }
}

int main()
{
    const int n1 = 5, n2 = 7, n3 = 6;
    int a[n1], x, y, z;
    float b[n2] = {};
    char c[n3] = "";

    //Begin writing files to text files which I name herein.
    cout << "Writing data to text 3 text  files." << endl;
    savetext(a, "integer.txt");
    savetext(b, "float.txt");
    savetext(c, "string.txt");
    cout << endl;

    //Retrieve the text in the files and display them on console to prove that they work.  
    cout << "Now reading files, bitch!" << endl;
    gettext(a, "integer.txt");
    gettext(b, "float.txt");
    gettext(c, "string.txt");
    cout << endl;

    return 0;

system("PAUSE");
}

Hello, and good evening. I have a C++ program that is currently writing data (integer, floats and chars) to 3 separate text files. However, when it writes the data to the text files two things happen: the data is inside the text file, but so is a bunch of unintelligible wingdings text and large numbers and large negative numbers -- data which I never entered in.

As a result of this, I'm not able to retrieve the information from the text file and I'm not able to display the information of the text file. How do I solve that problem? Thank you.

Answer 1

Your first problem is that you are writing uninitialized data to your files.