file problem

hi, the otherday someone taught me the way to detect if a file exist on a harddisk and then performs an action.

read.open("test.txt",ios::in|ios::nocreate)
if(!read)
action

however it doesn't work....are they any other ways to make it work? i need to move record from a year to another year by detecting if the record needed to move exist on the harddrive

and how do i detect if a location typed by a user exist? If it doesn't exist, then make a directory for them. (How to access dos commands in c++ console app?)