how do I get a single character from a text string?

I would like to obtain the first character from a text string and assign it to a variable. I tried to create an ifstream object to open a text file and using its get() function but was unsuccessful.

Show the code where you tried to open and read from the file.

Jim

Code:

char letter

ifstream reader("poem.txt");
if (!reader)
{
  cout << "Error opening input file" << endl;
 return -1;
}
else
  reader.get(letter);
  cout << letter;

reader.close();

Other than missing a semicolon, a main function and include files your snippet looks correct.

Jim