Why won't this work? File I/O concerns

[Copycat]

Don't be afraid of the length of this. It's not too long! urgent help!

I've got ski_data.txt's data like

Head Mojo 75 Jr
75
97.99
Head Monster m77
181
449.97
Salomon X-Wing Z14
163
405.00

and my code that is trying to transfer the data from ski_data.txt to ski_report.txt is

getline(indata, model);
outdata << setw(16) << model << " ";
indata.ignore(10, '\n') >> length;
outdata << setw(6) << length << " ";
indata.ignore(10, '\n') >> retail;
outdata << setw(8) << retail << endl;

getline(indata, model);
outdata << setw(16) << model << " ";
indata.ignore(10, '\n') >> length;
outdata << setw(6) << length << " ";
indata.ignore(10, '\n') >> retail;
outdata << setw(8) << retail << endl;

getline(indata, model);
outdata << setw(16) << model << " ";
indata.ignore(10, '\n') >> length;
outdata << setw(6) << length << " ";
indata.ignore(10, '\n') >> retail;
outdata << setw(8) << retail << endl;

Trying to get it to be like

Model Length Retail $
================ ====== ========
Head Majo 65 Jr 99cm 67.99
Head Monster m77 181cm 349.97
Salomon XW Fury 163cm 605.00
------------------------------------
Total: $ XXXX.XX

but all i get is

Model Length Retail $
================ ====== ========
Head Mojo 75 Jr 75 97.99
Head Mojo 75 Jr 75 97.99
Head Mojo 75 Jr 75 97.99
------------------------------------
Total $

question is, why won't it skip the damn lines! I've tried using ignore and getlines to get all the lines, but it didn't work. Someone help me please. =[

EDIT: I added an ignore function again. Now the problem is that it won't take the next lines x.x
EDIT2: I should also note that ski_data.txt is indata and ski_report.txt is outdata.

[guestgulkan]

C++ formatted input with streams can be a pain in the neck sometimes.

The getline function will get a line upto the first '\n' that it encounters. It will remove this '\n' from the stream.
This means that if the first character that getline encounters is the newline character, you will get an empty string returned.

With chars, int, float and such the behaviour is somewhat different. If will ignore any amount of consecutive '\n' at the start of a number. Once it start collecting the number It will stop when it comes across a non useful character such as newlines, spaces, etc AND IT WILL LEAVE THESE CHARACTERS IN THE STREAM.

So your code actually works like this:
1. Read the first line OK (removes newline from stream)
2. get the first length ok (but leaves newline in stream)
3. get the first retail OK - (but leaves newline in stream.)

4. Tries to get next line - get empty string beause of newline character.
5. Tries to get second length - FAILS - because first character it finds is a letter (leaves this letter in stream). Length variable is not changed
The stream is now marked as failed - all subsequent stream reads will now fail.

Now that we know what the problem is we can re-arrange your code like this:

getline(indata, model);
outdata << setw(16) << model << " ";
indata >> length;
outdata << setw(6) << length << " ";
indata >> retail;
outdata << setw(8) << retail << endl;

indata.ignore(1,'\n');//remove problem newline char
getline(indata, model);
outdata << setw(16) << model << " ";
indata >> length;
outdata << setw(6) << length << " ";
indata >> retail;
outdata << setw(8) << retail << endl;

indata.ignore(1,'\n'); //remove problem new line char
getline(indata, model);
outdata << setw(16) << model << " ";
indata >> length;
outdata << setw(6) << length << " ";
indata >> retail;
outdata << setw(8) << retail << endl;

[Copycat]

THANKS! :D I couldn't figure that out for the life of me, staring at it for two hours.