Filling Array Of Structures From A File

[triphoppa]

I'm having a hard time discovering how to fill an array of structures from a file. This is what I'm trying to do.

I am going to open a file from the command line. In the file are a bunch of records some of them in the proper format and some not. Each of the records are on one line of the file, like this.

Sumpter, David: 12445: 100: 85: 70: 78: B+
Laporte, Leo: 23855: 88:88: 100: 76: B
.
.
.
...and so on

Any ideas how I can get this type of data into an array of structures dynamically?

I don't need to handle all the records in the file just the first 100 valid records.

[Ganon11]

I assume your struct will look something like:

struct Student {
   string lname, fname, letterGrade;
   int idNum, grades[4];
};

(making the assumption based on your sample data that you are talking about students)

Can you assume that all the entries in your data file are separated by a ':'? If so, you can

a) Get a line from the file
b) Look for the first ':', and use everything before it as the last, first name.
c) Look for the next ':', and use everything before that as the idNum
d) Look for the next ':', and use everything before it as a grade
e) Repeat (d) for each entry in grades
f) Finally, take the remainder of the string as letterGrade.
g) Repeat (a)-(f) 100 times

This approach assumes that, as you get data from the line, you destroy the line in the process (i.e. after step (b), a data line might look like " 12445: 100: 85: 70: 78: B+").

However, if you cannot make the assumption that all your data entries will be separated by a ':', your job becomes almost impossible, and you may want to consider invalidating certain lines before even trying to process them.

[triphoppa]

Thanks that's just the jump start I needed!!