Input/output with files

C++ provides the following classes to perform output and input of characters to/from files:

ofstream: Stream class to write on files

ifstream: Stream class to read from files
fstream: Stream class to both read and write from/to

files.

These classes are derived directly or indirectly from the classes istream and ostream. We have
already used objects whose types were these classes: cin is an object of class istream and cout
is an object of class ostream. Therefore, we have already been using classes that are related to
our file streams. And in fact, we can use our file streams the same way we are already used to
use cin and cout, with the only difference that we have to associate these streams with physical
files. Let's see an example:
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// basic file operations

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main () {
[file example.txt]
ofstream myfile;
Writing this to a file.
myfile.open ("example.txt");
myfile << "Writing this to a file.\n";
myfile.close();
return 0;
}

Edit & Run

This code creates a file called example.txt and inserts a sentence into it in the same way we are
used to do with cout, but using the file stream myfile instead.
But let's go step by step:

Open a file
The first operation generally performed on an object of one of these classes is to associate it to a
real file. This procedure is known as to open a file. An open file is represented within a program
by a stream (i.e., an object of one of these classes; in the previous example, this was myfile) and
any input or output operation performed on this stream object will be applied to the physical file
associated to it.
In order to open a file with a stream object we use its member function open:

open (filename, mode);

Where filename is a string representing the name of the file to be opened, and mode is an
optional parameter with a combination of the following flags:
ios::in

Open for input operations.

ios::out
Open for output operations.
ios::binary Open in binary mode.
Set the initial position at the end of the file.
ios::ate
If this flag is not set, the initial position is the beginning of the file.
All output operations are performed at the end of the file, appending the content to
ios::app
the current content of the file.
If the file is opened for output operations and it already existed, its previous
ios::trunc
content is deleted and replaced by the new one.
All these flags can be combined using the bitwise operator OR (|). For example, if we want to
open the file example.bin in binary mode to add data we could do it by the following call to
member function open:
1 ofstream myfile;
2 myfile.open ("example.bin", ios::out | ios::app | ios::binary);

Each of the open member functions of classes ofstream, ifstream and fstream has a default
mode that is used if the file is opened without a second argument:
class

default mode parameter

ofstream ios::out
ifstream ios::in
fstream ios::in | ios::out
For ifstream and ofstream classes, ios::in and ios::out are automatically and respectively
assumed, even if a mode that does not include them is passed as second argument to the open
member function (the flags are combined).
For fstream, the default value is only applied if the function is called without specifying any
value for the mode parameter. If the function is called with any value in that parameter the
default mode is overridden, not combined.
File streams opened in binary mode perform input and output operations independently of any
format considerations. Non-binary files are known as text files, and some translations may occur
due to formatting of some special characters (like newline and carriage return characters).
Since the first task that is performed on a file stream is generally to open a file, these three

classes include a constructor that automatically calls the open member function and has the exact
same parameters as this member. Therefore, we could also have declared the previous myfile
object and conduct the same opening operation in our previous example by writing:
ofstream myfile ("example.bin", ios::out | ios::app | ios::binary);

Combining object construction and stream opening in a single statement. Both forms to open a
file are valid and equivalent.
To check if a file stream was successful opening a file, you can do it by calling to member
is_open. This member function returns a bool value of true in the case that indeed the stream
object is associated with an open file, or false otherwise:
if (myfile.is_open()) { /* ok, proceed with output */ }

Closing a file
When we are finished with our input and output operations on a file we shall close it so that the
operating system is notified and its resources become available again. For that, we call the
stream's member function close. This member function takes flushes the associated buffers and
closes the file:
myfile.close();

Once this member function is called, the stream object can be re-used to open another file, and
the file is available again to be opened by other processes.
In case that an object is destroyed while still associated with an open file, the destructor
automatically calls the member function close.

Text files
Text file streams are those where the ios::binary flag is not included in their opening mode.
These files are designed to store text and thus all values that are input or output from/to them can
suffer some formatting transformations, which do not necessarily correspond to their literal
binary value.
Writing operations on text files are performed in the same way we operated with cout:

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// writing on a text file

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main () {
ofstream myfile ("example.txt");
[file example.txt]
if (myfile.is_open())
This is a line.
{
This is another line.
myfile << "This is a line.\n";
myfile << "This is another line.\n";
myfile.close();
}
else cout << "Unable to open file";
return 0;
}

Edit & Run

Reading from a file can also be performed in the same way that we did with cin:
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// reading a text file

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main () {
string line;
ifstream myfile ("example.txt");
if (myfile.is_open())
{
while ( getline (myfile,line) )
{
cout << line << '\n';
}
myfile.close();
}

This is a line.
This is another line.

Edit & Run

else cout << "Unable to open file";

return 0;
}

This last example reads a text file and prints out its content on the screen. We have created a
while loop that reads the file line by line, using getline. The value returned by getline is a
reference to the stream object itself, which when evaluated as a boolean expression (as in this
while-loop) is true if the stream is ready for more operations, and false if either the end of the
file has been reached or if some other error occurred.

Checking state flags

The following member functions exist to check for specific states of a stream (all of them return
a bool value):
bad()

Returns true if a reading or writing operation fails. For example, in the case that we try
to write to a file that is not open for writing or if the device where we try to write has no
space left.
fail()

Returns true in the same cases as bad(), but also in the case that a format error happens,
like when an alphabetical character is extracted when we are trying to read an integer
number.
eof()

Returns true if a file open for reading has reached the end.
good()

It is the most generic state flag: it returns false in the same cases in which calling any of
the previous functions would return true. Note that good and bad are not exact opposites
(good checks more state flags at once).
The member function clear() can be used to reset the state flags.

get and put stream positioning

All i/o streams objects keep internally -at least- one internal position:
ifstream,

like istream, keeps an internal get position with the location of the element to be
read in the next input operation.
ofstream,

like ostream, keeps an internal put position with the location where the next element
has to be written.
Finally, fstream, keeps both, the get and the put position, like iostream.
These internal stream positions point to the locations within the stream where the next reading or
writing operation is performed. These positions can be observed and modified using the
following member functions:
tellg() and tellp()
These two member functions with no parameters return a value of the member type streampos,
which is a type representing the current get position (in the case of tellg) or the put position (in
the case of tellp).
seekg() and seekp()

These functions allow to change the location of the get and put positions. Both functions are
overloaded with two different prototypes. The first form is:
seekg ( position );
seekp ( position );

Using this prototype, the stream pointer is changed to the absolute position position (counting
from the beginning of the file). The type for this parameter is streampos, which is the same type
as returned by functions tellg and tellp.
The other form for these functions is:
seekg ( offset, direction );
seekp ( offset, direction );

Using this prototype, the get or put position is set to an offset value relative to some specific
point determined by the parameter direction. offset is of type streamoff. And direction is
of type seekdir, which is an enumerated type that determines the point from where offset is
counted from, and that can take any of the following values:
ios::beg

offset counted from the beginning of the stream

ios::cur offset counted from the current position
ios::end offset counted from the end of the stream
The following example uses the member functions we have just seen to obtain the size of a file:
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// obtaining file size

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main () {
streampos begin,end;
ifstream myfile ("example.bin", ios::binary);
begin = myfile.tellg();
myfile.seekg (0, ios::end);
end = myfile.tellg();
myfile.close();
cout << "size is: " << (end-begin) << "
bytes.\n";
return 0;
}

Notice the type we have used for variables begin and end:
streampos size;

size is: 40
bytes.

Edit &
Run

streampos is a specific type used for buffer and file positioning and is the type returned by
file.tellg(). Values of this type can safely be subtracted from other values of the same type,

and can also be converted to an integer type large enough to contain the size of the file.
These stream positioning functions use two particular types: streampos and streamoff. These
types are also defined as member types of the stream class:
Type

Member type

Description
Defined as fpos<mbstate_t>.
streampos ios::pos_type It can be converted to/from streamoff and can be added or
subtracted values of these types.
It is an alias of one of the fundamental integral types (such as int or
streamoff ios::off_type
long long).
Each of the member types above is an alias of its non-member equivalent (they are the exact
same type). It does not matter which one is used. The member types are more generic, because
they are the same on all stream objects (even on streams using exotic types of characters), but the
non-member types are widely used in existing code for historical reasons.

Binary files
For binary files, reading and writing data with the extraction and insertion operators (<< and >>)
and functions like getline is not efficient, since we do not need to format any data and data is
likely not formatted in lines.
File streams include two member functions specifically designed to read and write binary data
sequentially: write and read. The first one (write) is a member function of ostream (inherited
by ofstream). And read is a member function of istream (inherited by ifstream). Objects of
class fstream have both. Their prototypes are:
write ( memory_block, size );
read ( memory_block, size );

Where memory_block is of type char* (pointer to char), and represents the address of an array
of bytes where the read data elements are stored or from where the data elements to be written
are taken. The size parameter is an integer value that specifies the number of characters to be
read or written from/to the memory block.
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// reading an entire binary file

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main () {
streampos size;

the entire file

content is in memory

Edit &
Run

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char * memblock;
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ifstream file ("example.bin",
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if (file.is_open())
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{
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size = file.tellg();
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memblock = new char [size];
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file.seekg (0, ios::beg);
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file.read (memblock, size);
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file.close();
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cout << "the entire file content is in
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delete[] memblock;
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}
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else cout << "Unable to open file";
return 0;
}

In this example, the entire file is read and stored in a memory block. Let's examine how this is
done:
First, the file is open with the ios::ate flag, which means that the get pointer will be positioned
at the end of the file. This way, when we call to member tellg(), we will directly obtain the
size of the file.
Once we have obtained the size of the file, we request the allocation of a memory block large
enough to hold the entire file:
memblock = new char[size];

Right after that, we proceed to set the get position at the beginning of the file (remember that we
opened the file with this pointer at the end), then we read the entire file, and finally close it:
1 file.seekg (0, ios::beg);
2 file.read (memblock, size);
3 file.close();

At this point we could operate with the data obtained from the file. But our program simply
announces that the content of the file is in memory and then finishes.

Buffers and Synchronization

When we operate with file streams, these are associated to an internal buffer object of type
streambuf. This buffer object may represent a memory block that acts as an intermediary
between the stream and the physical file. For example, with an ofstream, each time the member
function put (which writes a single character) is called, the character may be inserted in this
intermediate buffer instead of being written directly to the physical file with which the stream is
associated.
The operating system may also define other layers of buffering for reading and writing to files.
When the buffer is flushed, all the data contained in it is written to the physical medium (if it is
an output stream). This process is called synchronization and takes place under any of the
following circumstances:

When the file is closed: before closing a file, all buffers that have not yet been flushed
are synchronized and all pending data is written or read to the physical medium.
When the buffer is full: Buffers have a certain size. When the buffer is full it is
automatically synchronized.
Explicitly, with manipulators: When certain manipulators are used on streams, an
explicit synchronization takes place. These manipulators are: flush and endl.
Explicitly, with member function sync(): Calling the stream's member function sync()
causes an immediate synchronization. This function returns an int value equal to -1 if
the stream has no associated buffer or in case of failure. Otherwise (if the stream buffer
was successfully synchronized) it returns 0.