Reading a file using delimeters

[Sw07fSEw]

I have a project where I'm trying to save and load data from a file. I can save data to files just fine, however I have a couple questions about reading them. In my project I have a map of type map<string, vector<string>>. The key returns a vector of strings. In my project the key is a name of a holiday and the elements in the vector are different magicians available on that holiday. I'm saving my data to a file in this format:

Christmas	Magician_0|Magician_1|TestMagician|Andrew|Bobby|
Thanksgiving	Magician_1|TestMagician|Andrew|Bobby|
Easter	Andrew|Bobby|

The key is delimited from the vector using a tab. Then the elements of the vector are delimited from each other using pipes. The problem I'm running into is how do I know when I reach the last element of the vector? The number of elements in each vector varies and I won't know the size of it beforehand. I have the following code so far, but I'm not sure how to know when I've reached the end of the line.

void loadLookupByHolidayMap() {
	ifstream lookupByHolidayFile;
	lookupByHolidayFile.open("lookupByHoliday.txt");

	while (!lookupByHolidayFile.eof()) {
		string key, magician;
		getline(lookupByHolidayFile, key, '\t'); // input data as key until a tab is found

		//pseudocode...
		while (not end of line) {
			getline(lookupByHolidayFile, magician, '|');
			myMap[key].push_back(magician); // add a magician to the vector
		}//now move onto the next line (or map key), and repeat.
	}

	lookupByHolidayFile.close();
}

If someone could point me in the right direction that'd be great.

[jlb]

Instead of having the delimiter after the last entry leave it off:

Christmas Mag1|Mag_2|etc
Then use getline() retrieve the complete line into a std::string then use stringstream to parse that string.

Oh and by the way I recommend you stop using all those global variables.

You may also want to consider using the same delimiter for the entire line.

[Sw07fSEw]

Ok thank you. What do you mean by my global variables? I see only one variable in my code above that wasn't declared in the scope of the function and it's a map, myMap. Is having containers as global throughout the program considered bad practice?

[jlb]

Is having containers as global throughout the program considered bad practice?

IMO, yes.