Question

I’m a programming student in my second OOP class, my first class was taught in C# and this class is taught in C++. To get our feet wet in C++, our professor has asked us to write a rather large program with File I/O. The problem is, I have a small part of my program that is not working, at least, not for me. The project requires that we code a loop to test if the file could be opened successfully, and the loop I have written doesn’t seem to be working.

I don’t get any compiler errors, but when I enter in the path to the file, either relative or absolute, it says it’s invalid. I have a feeling it has something to do with my conditions in my do-while loop, but I can’t pinpoint it.

I don’t mean to bring my homework to SO, but I’ve been scratching my head for two+ hours, and I can’t seem to figure this out.

Would you mind helping me fix my loop? And maybe explain what it is that I’m doing wrong? I want to learn.

Thanks!

Code:

Rainfall rData;
ifstream actualReader;
ifstream averageReader;
string aRDataLoc;
char response = 'a';
const int KILL_VALUE = 1;
double actualRainfallD;
double actualRainfallPassedArray[ARRAY_CAPACITY];
double averageRainfallPassedArray[ARRAY_CAPACITY];
int i = 0;

do
{
    actualReader.clear();
    cout << "\nPlease enter in the path to the file containing the actual rainfall  data." << endl;
    cout << "Path to file: ";
    cin >> aRDataLoc;
    actualReader.open(aRDataLoc.c_str());
      if (!actualReader.is_open())
          {
            cout << "Invalid file path! Would you like to enter in a new file path?(y/n): ";
            cin >> response;
            if (response == 'n') { exit(KILL_VALUE); }
    }
}while (!actualReader.is_open() && response == 'y');

Answer 1

I don’t know what input you are giving to cin, but be aware that cin will stop at the first whitespace character it encounters. For example, if you give as input the following:

C:\Program Files\directory

then aRDataLog would have the value C:\Program .

In order to read the whole line, you could use getline.

Check also this post.