You've already been told about std::getline, but they didn't mention one detail that you'll probably find useful: when you call getline, you can also pass a parameter telling it what character to treat as the end of input. To read your number, you can use:
std::string number;
std::string name;
std::getline(infile, number, ':');
std::getline(infile, name);
This will put the data up to the ':' into number, discard the ':', and read the rest of the line into name.
If you want to use >> to read the data, you can do that too, but it's a bit more difficult, and delves into an area of the standard library that most people never touch. A stream has an associated locale that's used for things like formatting numbers and (importantly) determining what constitutes "white space". You can define your own locale to define the ":" as white space, and the space (" ") as not white space. Tell the stream to use that locale, and it'll let you read your data directly.
#include <locale>
#include <vector>
struct colonsep: std::ctype<char> {
colonsep(): std::ctype<char>(get_table()) {}
static std::ctype_base::mask const* get_table() {
static std::vector<std::ctype_base::mask>
rc(std::ctype<char>::table_size,std::ctype_base::mask());
rc[':'] = std::ctype_base::space;
rc['\n'] = std::ctype_base::space;
return &rc[0];
}
};
Now to use it, we "imbue" the stream with a locale:
#include <fstream>
#include <iterator>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>
typedef std::pair<int, std::string> data;
namespace std {
std::istream &operator>>(std::istream &is, data &d) {
return is >> d.first >> d.second;
}
std::ostream &operator<<(std::ostream &os, data const &d) {
return os << d.first << ":" << d.second;
}
}
int main() {
std::ifstream infile("testfile.txt");
infile.imbue(std::locale(std::locale(), new colonsep));
std::vector<data> d;
std::copy(std::istream_iterator<data>(infile),
std::istream_iterator<data>(),
std::back_inserter(d));
// just for fun, sort the data to show we can manipulate it:
std::sort(d.begin(), d.end());
std::copy(d.begin(), d.end(), std::ostream_iterator<data>(std::cout, "\n"));
return 0;
}
Now you know why that part of the library is so neglected. In theory, getting the standard library to do your work for you is great -- but in fact, most of the time it's easier to do this kind of job on your own instead.
