Reading CSV files in C++

If you are an engineer used to coding in Python or Matlab who is transitioning to C++, you will soon find out that even the most innocent task will now require several lines of code. A previous post has already shown how to export data to a CSV file. In order to facilitate your transition to C++, see below for an example of how to read your new CSV file.

Utils.cpp

#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <sstream> //istringstream
#include <iostream> // cout
#include <fstream> // ifstream

using namespace std;

/**
 * Reads csv file into table, exported as a vector of vector of doubles.
 * @param inputFileName input file name (full path).
 * @return data as vector of vector of doubles.
 */
vector<vector<double>> parse2DCsvFile(string inputFileName) {

    vector<vector<double> > data;
    ifstream inputFile(inputFileName);
    int l = 0;

    while (inputFile) {
        l++;
        string s;
        if (!getline(inputFile, s)) break;
        if (s[0] != '#') {
            istringstream ss(s);
            vector<double> record;

            while (ss) {
                string line;
                if (!getline(ss, line, ','))
                    break;
                try {
                    record.push_back(stof(line));
                }
                catch (const std::invalid_argument e) {
                    cout << "NaN found in file " << inputFileName << " line " << l
                         << endl;
                    e.what();
                }
            }

            data.push_back(record);
        }
    }

    if (!inputFile.eof()) {
        cerr << "Could not read file " << inputFileName << "\n";
        __throw_invalid_argument("File not found.");
    }

    return data;
}

int main()
{
    vector<vector<double>> data = parse2DCsvFile("test.csv");

    for (auto l : data) {
    	for (auto x : l)
    		cout << x << " ";
    	cout << endl;
    }

    return 0;
}