Argthtjtr

I am working on an assignment for my c++ class, and I am pretty close to solving my problem. At this point, I am getting output that is ALMOST what I was expecting, so I suspect that I may be misunderstanding a core concept of this problem. The part of my assignment I am working on now is to get a file name from the user, read in that file, and then display that file while replacing key characters. For example, :!, will be replaced with 'n' to make a new line. I am only allowed to use iostream and fstream, and all text must be handled with char arrays. In my current output, I am getting an extra space on the third line, and I do not understand how it is getting there. Because of this, I think I may have the logic wrong in my head, and was wondering if any more experienced programmers could explain where I am going wrong. Am I going in the right direction?

here is the text file I am using as practice: 1.txt

Type, type, type away :!

compile.

Run.

Hip hip hooray! :! No errors today! :!

This is the expected output of the same file: 1.txt

Type, type, type away

compile. Run. Hip hip hooray! 

No errors today!

this is the output that I am getting

Type, type, type away

compile. Run. Hip hip hooray! 

 No errors today! <<-------- extra space at the beginning!

I will paste my code below, feel free to critique it in any way.

#include <iostream>

#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

#define MAX 1024 // this is the maximum allowed number of char in a file.

                 // is it a bad idea to define it as a constant?



int main()

{

    char fileName[256];

    char data[MAX];

    int readFile(char fileName,char data);

    void display(char data, int counter);

    fstream file;



    cout << "File Name: ";

    cin >> fileName;



    int counter = readFile(fileName, data);

    display(data, counter);



    return 0;

}



int readFile(char fileName, char data)

{

    ifstream file;

    file.open(fileName);



    int count = 0;

    while(file.get(data[count]) && count < MAX)

    {

        count++;

    }

    file.close();

    return count;

}



void display(char data, int counter)

{

    char formatText(char data, int count);

    for(int i = 0; i < counter; i++)

    {

        if(data[i] == 'n') // I added this if statment in because the newline

        {                   // from the file was getting read, AND the :! was

            data[i] = ''; // becoming n, printing out TWO new lines!

        }



    }

    for(int i = 0; i < counter; i++)

    {

        formatText(data, i);



        if(data[i] != ':') // All tokens have a : before, So i dont want to 

            cout << data[i]; // print out the :'s.

    }

}



char formatText(char data, int count)

{

    if(data[count] == ':')

    {

        switch(data[count + 1]) // these are the three tokens I have been given,

        {                       // but it has to be expandable for more later.

            case '!': data[count + 1] = 'n';

                break;

            case '<': data[count + 1] = '"';

                break;

            case '>': data[count + 1] = '"';

                break;

        }

    }



}

I'm sorry if this has been answered in another post, I was unable to find (or possibly understand) the answer to my question. Thank you for your time and patience.

Type, type, type away :!

compile.

Run.

Hip hip hooray! :! No errors. today! :!

ok. the first thing you do in formatting is remove all the newlines 'n' in the character array and that leaves you with

Type, type, type away :!compile.Run.Hip hip hooray! :! No errors today! :!

then you replace all the !'s preceded by :'s with 'n' but if you notice that in this state all your :!'s have a non whitespace character in the next index position save one.

 :! No errors

and that's your error, because it then replaces your sequence as n No errors

changing your input data to

Type, type, type away :!

compile.

Run.

Hip hip hooray! :!No errors today! :!

fixes that extra space problem.