How can I embed resources within my executable to hide them from a user?

I am building a program that will randomly select text from a file.

What can I use to hide the file with the text from the user?

Is it possible to build in this text to the executable?

Solution

Is it possible to build in this text to the executable?

One way to include a text file as an inlined resource is to modify your textfile a bit and use an #include statement:

Format of the text file:

R"rawtext(
Put all of the text input you want here:
...
)rawtext"

Modification probably could be also done using a little tool that just surrounds the text you want to get inlined with your program at a pre- preprocessing step for compilation:

At a GNU makefile for example:

 MySource.cpp: MySource.h MyTextFile.inc

 MyTextFile.inc: MyTextFile.txt
     sed -e "s/\(.*\)/R'rawtext(\1)rawtext'/" < $< > $@

In your program you can use then:

std::istrstream input(
#include "MyTextFile.inc"
);

And use it with a std::istream like you would do from an externally opened file.

You can read more about raw string literals here.