CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++istreamseekg
Oliver Yu
Oliver Yu

Reputation: 99

why does a blank line occupy to two bytes?

I'm new to C++. I'd like to count the blank lines at the end of a text file. But now i meet a problem. The contents of the text file are like:

test.txt

1
2
blank line

The code is:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    ifstream inFile("test.txt",ios::in);
    if (!inFile.good())
    {
        cout << "error" << endl;
    }

    inFile.clear();
    inFile.seekg(-1, ios::end);
    char a;
    inFile.get(a);
    cout << "symbol for a: " << a << "ASCII: " << (int)a << endl;

    inFile.clear();
    inFile.seekg(-2, ios::end);
    char b;
    inFile.get(b);
    cout << "symbol for b: " << b << "ASCII: " << (int)b << endl;
}

The result is:

symbol for a: // a stands for the last character which is '\n'
ASCII: 10
symbol for b: // b stands for the second last character, which should be "2"
ASCII: 10

In the result shown above, the value of b is also \n. Why?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 597

Answers (1)

Stephen Duffy
Stephen Duffy

Reputation: 505

On Windows, a newline generates two ascii characters "\r\n" (carriage return, line feed) [10,13] Open any source code in a hex editor and youll see the TWO chars at the end of each line.

Upvotes: 4

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