Initialize Complex Structures From File Input

One strength of the input stream is its ability to parse different types of data from a text file and convert them to their corresponding fundamental types. Here's a simple technique for importing data into a container of structures using an input stream.

How to do it

In this recipe, we'll take a data file and import its disparate fields into a vector of struct objects. The data file represents cities with their populations and map coordinates:

• This is input.txt, the data file we'll read:

The city name is on a line by itself. The second line is population, followed by longitude and latitude. This pattern repeats for each of the five cities.

• We'll ...