send file to program using following syntax "cat file.rle | ./code"

[dustout]

Does anyone know how I would set up my program to allow a text file to be piped into my compiled code?

it should work by issuing a command similar to the one below
cat file.rle | ./code

thanks

[laasunde]

Sorry, this does not make any sense to me. Please explain with a bit more detail. What do you hope to accomplish?

[olivthill2]

Use stdin in your program to get the data passed to the pipe.

  c = (char) fgetc(stdin);
  printf("%c", c);

stdin is a keyword recognized by your C compiler.
Use fgetc() or fread(). Don't use fopen() and fclose().

[treuss]

it should work by issuing a command similar to the one below
cat file.rle | ./code

Your program just needs to read from standard input. The shell command sends the content of the file as input for your program.

Thus the following program:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main() {
  std::string word;
  std::cin >> word;
  std::cout << "Input starts with the word " << word << "\n";
}

will print the first word of the file.rle that you pipe to it.