know the number of columns from text file, separated by space or tab
I need to know the number of columns from a text file with floats. I've made like this to know the number of lines: inFile.open(pathV); // checks if file opened if(inFile.fail()) { cout << "error loading .txt file for reading" << endl; return; } // Count the number of lines int NUMlines = 0; while(inFile.peek() != EOF){ getline(inFile, dummyLine); NUMlines++; } inFile.close(); cout << NUMlines-3 << endl; // The file has 3 lines at the beginning that I don't read A line of the .txt : 189.53 58.867 74.254 72.931 80.354 The number of values can vary from file to file but not on the same file.