How to skip a string when reading a file line by line

Question

I have managed to skip the name section when reading values from a file with name and value pairs. But is there another way to skip the name section without declaring a dummy string to store the skipped data? Example text file: https://i.stack.imgur.com/94l1w.png ``` void loadConfigFile() { ifstream file(folder + "config.txt"); while (!file.eof()) { file >> skip; file >> screenMode; if (screenMode == "on") notFullScreen = 0; else if (screenMode == "off") notFullScreen = 1; file >> skip; file >> playerXPosMS; file >> skip; file >> playerYPosMS; file >> skip; file >> playerGForce; } file.close(); } ```

Accepted Answer

You can use `std::cin.ignore` to ignore input up to some specified delimiter (e.g., a new-line, to skip an entire line).

```
static const int max_line = 65536;

std::cin.ignore(max_line, '
');
```

While many people recommend specifying a maximum of something like `std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max()`, I do not. If the user accidentally points the program at the wrong file, they shouldn't wait while it consumes an inordinate amount of data before being told something's wrong.

Two other points.

- Don't use `while (!file.eof())`. It mostly leads to problems. For a case like this, you really want to define a `struct` or `class` to hold your related values, define an `operator>>` for that class, then use `while (file>>player_object) ...`

- The way you're reading right now really tries to read a "word" at a time, not a whole line. If you want to read a whole line, you probably want to use `std::getline`.

How to skip a string when reading a file line by line

Solution

Problem