File input and output

Overview of file i/o in c++

We need to understand how to open, read, write and close text files. The following File Input/Output terms are explained:

Text File – A file consisting of characters from the ASCII character code set. Text files (also know an ASCII text files) contain character data. When we create a text file we usually think of it consisting of a series of lines. On each line are several characters (including spaces, punctuation, etc.) and we generally end the line with a return (this a character within the ASCII character code set). The return is also known as the new line character. You are most likely already familiar with the escape code of \n which is used within C++ to indicate a return character when used with in a literal string with the cout.

A typical text file consisting of lines can be created by text editors (Notepad) or word processing programs (Microsoft Word). When using a word processor you must usually specify the output file as text (.txt) when saving it. Most source code files are ASCII text files with a unique file extension; such as C++ using .cpp, Pascal using .pas, Cobol using .cob, etc. Thus, most compiler/Integrated Development Environment software packages (such as the Bloodshed Dev-C++ 5 compiler/IDE ) can be used to create ASCII text files.

Filename – The name and its extension. Most operating systems have restrictions on which characters can be used in filenames. Example for MS-DOS and Windows: Lab_05.txt

Because some operating systems do not allow spaces, we suggest that you use the underscore where needed for spacing in a filename.

Filespec – The location of a file along with its filename. It is short for file specification. Most operating systems have a set of rules on how to specify the drive and directory (or path through several directory levels) along with the filename. Example for MS-DOS and Windows: C:\myfiles\cosc_1436\Lab_05.txt

Because some operating systems do not allow spaces, we suggest that you use the underscore where needed when creating folders or sub-directories.

Open – Your program requesting the operating system to let it have access to an existing file or to open a new file. Within C++ this is accomplished by including the header file:<fstream>File Input/Output is handled in C++ by using a pre-defined class of data objects, similar to the way string data type is handled. This class of objects has both data type names and functions built to specifically accomplish opening and closing a file.

Within your program you create a local storage variable with the data type of fstream like this:

fstream inData;

This variable will be used to store the device token that the operating system assigns to the file being opened. Thus, opening a file uses a class member function call like this:

inData.open("C:\\myfiles\\cosc_1436\\Lab_05.txt", ios::in);

The two parameters passed to the function are the filespec and the method that you want to use the file (in this example as input). The function provides a returning value of a device token from the operating system and it is stored in the variable named inData.