this is what total needs to be done http://www.cs.uakron.edu/~margush/210/Prog2.htm what i can't figure out is how to input a whole line from a file into a character array. all my text shows is how to get a single word. i'm thinking it's cin.getline, but i'm not sure how the code would be written yes it is late -_-;;

As I recall, it *should* be something like ifstream input; input.getline(..);

how's it all look together? i know this is wrong cause i only get a blank line =/ #include <iostream> #include <fstream> using std::ios; int main(){ const int max = 14; char isbn[max]; std::ifstream input("somebook.dat",ios::in); input.getline(isbn,max,'\n'); std::cout << isbn << std::endl; return 0; }

okay, now i got it to input, but it doesn't see the eof and goes inf. -_-; stupid dat files

I've been playing with C for months, so I've forgotten a lot of cpp. However, I *think* something like this will allow you to read the entire file. I haven't checked your program link, so I dunno what the program requires. :) int ch; while((ch = input.peek()) != EOF) { input.getline(isbn, max, '\n'); // do something with isbn } input.close(); make sure you're not trying to read in more than your array can hold. Since you're using cpp, why not use the string class instead?