Read file-contents into a string in C++ [duplicate

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What is the best way to slurp a file into a std::string in c++?

In scripting languages like Perl, it is possible to read a file into a variable in one shot.

    open(FILEHANDLE,$file);
    $content=<FILEHANDLE>;

What would be the most efficient way to do this in C++?

Answer 1

The most efficient is to create a buffer of the correct size and then read the file into the buffer.

#include <fstream>
#include <vector>

int main()
{
    std::ifstream       file("Plop");
    if (file)
    {
        /*
         * Get the size of the file
         */
        file.seekg(0,std::ios::end);
        std::streampos          length = file.tellg();
        file.seekg(0,std::ios::beg);

        /*
         * Use a vector as the buffer.
         * It is exception safe and will be tidied up correctly.
         * This constructor creates a buffer of the correct length.
         * Because char is a POD data type it is not initialized.
         *
         * Then read the whole file into the buffer.
         */
        std::vector<char>       buffer(length);
        file.read(&buffer[0],length);
    }
}

Answer 2

Like this:

#include <fstream>
#include <string>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{

  std::ifstream ifs("myfile.txt");
  std::string content( (std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(ifs) ),
                       (std::istreambuf_iterator<char>()    ) );

  return 0;
}

The statement

  std::string content( (std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(ifs) ),
                       (std::istreambuf_iterator<char>()    ) );

can be split into

std::string content;
content.assign( (std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(ifs) ),
                (std::istreambuf_iterator<char>()    ) );

which is useful if you want to just overwrite the value of an existing std::string variable.

Answer 3

maybe not the most efficient, but reads data in one line:

#include<iostream>
#include<vector>
#include<iterator>

main(int argc,char *argv[]){
  // read standard input into vector:
  std::vector<char>v(std::istream_iterator<char>(std::cin),
                     std::istream_iterator<char>());
  std::cout << "read " << v.size() << "chars\n";
}

Answer 4

Here's an iterator-based method.

ifstream file("file", ios::binary);
string fileStr;

istreambuf_iterator<char> inputIt(file), emptyInputIt
back_insert_iterator<string> stringInsert(fileStr);

copy(inputIt, emptyInputIt, stringInsert);

Answer 5

There should be no \0 in text files.

#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>

using namespace std;

int main(){
  fstream f(FILENAME, fstream::in );
  string s;
  getline( f, s, '\0');

  cout << s << endl;
  f.close();
}

Answer 6

This depends on a lot of things, such as what is the size of the file, what is its type (text/binary) etc. Some time ago I benchmarked the following function against versions using streambuf iterators - it was about twice as fast:

unsigned int FileRead( std::istream & is, std::vector <char> & buff ) {
    is.read( &buff[0], buff.size() );
    return is.gcount();
}

void FileRead( std::ifstream & ifs, string & s ) {
    const unsigned int BUFSIZE = 64 * 1024; // reasoable sized buffer
    std::vector <char> buffer( BUFSIZE );

    while( unsigned int n = FileRead( ifs, buffer ) ) {
        s.append( &buffer[0], n );
    }
}