Thread: Program crashes...help Needed!!

Hi,

Pls help me out...My prog crashes when I start reading the text file......It reads the names......but cant go further....
It was working perfect initially when the gender was kept as string..
But our teacher wants it to be read as char.....

Error message is DEBUG error----Abnormal program termination-Press retry to debug the application........

help.......

thanks a lot.

Code:

int adatabase(competitor database[], int &tmprec , int &tempID)
{
    int i =0;
    string tempString="abs";

     ifstream inputFile("records.txt", ios::in );
    tempID= atoi(readFileLine(inputFile).c_str());

     /*if(inputFile.seekg(0, ios::end))
        {
	cout<<"file is empty"<<endl;
	tmprec =0;
       }*/
		 	
        while(!inputFile.eof() && tmprec < DATABASESIZE)
        {
				
       database[tmprec].competitorName= readFileLine(inputFile);
       cout<<database[tmprec].competitorName;
        database[tmprec].ID = atoi(readFileLine(inputFile).c_str());
       tempString = readFileLine(inputFile);
      char compGend= tempString.at(0);//PROBLEM LIES HERE..I     SUPPOSE
        database[tmprec].compGender = compGend;
        database[tmprec].birthDate.day= atoi(readFileLine     (inputFile).c_str());
        database[tmprec].birthDate.month = atoi(readFileLine(inputFile).c_str());
       database[tmprec].birthDate.year = atoi(readFileLine(inputFile).c_str());
tmprec= tmprec++; 

	}
	
return tmprec;
return tempID;

}

string readFileLine(ifstream &inputFile)
{
    char buffer[SIZE];
    inputFile.getline(buffer, SIZE, '\n');
    return buffer;
}

SIZE is a global constant : const int SIZE = 81;

thanks Skipper , ur a genius....