Question: Basically what I want to do is to load a string from a file that is to be encoded as a json. 

The way I have achieved this is quite verbose for what should be a simple operation:

```
std::ifstream t(json_path);

std::string stringbuf = std::string(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(t), std::istreambuf_iterator<char>());

boost::erase_all(stringbuf, "\t");

boost::erase_all(stringbuf, "\n");

boost::erase_all(stringbuf, " ");

```

Is there a briefer way to load a text file to a string and strip out the special characters?

Answer: 
```
// Open the file
std::ifstream t(json_path);

// Initialize the string directly, no = sign needed.
// C++11: Let second istreambuf_iterator argument be deduced from the first.
std::string stringbuf(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(t),  {});

// C++11: Use a lambda to adapt remove_if.
char ws[] = " \t\n";
auto new_end = std::remove_if( stringbuf.begin(), stringbuf.end(),
    []( char c ) { return std::count( ws, ws + 3, c ); } );

// Boost was doing this part for you, but it's easy enough.
stringbuf.erase( new_end, stringbuf.end() );

```
You can do that in that way:

```
inFile.open(fileName, ios::in); 

if(inFile.fail()) {
    cout<<"error opening the file.";
} else {
    getline(inFile,paragraph);
    cout << paragraph << endl << endl;
}

numWords=paragraph.length();

while (subscript < numWords) {
    curChar = paragraph.substr(subscript, 1);
    if(curChar==","||curChar=="."||curChar==")"
        ||curChar=="("||curChar==";"||curChar==":"||curChar=="-"
        ||curChar=="\""||curChar=="&"||curChar=="?"||
        curChar=="%"||curChar=="$"||curChar=="!") {
        paragraph.erase(subscript, 1);
        numWords-=1;
    } else {
        subscript+=1;
    }
}

cout<<paragraph<<endl;
inFile.close();

```