Need advice: catch exceptions or call methods to check bits?

Howdy,
I am wondering what is a better approach to check whether or not stream operations succeeded:

Check exceptions:

Code:

file.exceptions(ios_base::eofbit||ios_base::failbit);

try
{
   do operations on stream
}
catch (ios_base::eofbit)
{
   handle this exception
}
catch (ios_base::failbit)
{
   handle this exception
}

or just use the methods provided with streams:

Code:

do operations on stream

if (file.eof())
{
   handle eof
}

if (file.fail())
{
   handle failure
}

Normally I'd use exceptions but I'm wondering why the methods eof(), etc., were provided if exception-checking is better. I imagine the exceptions handling is much faster and creates less error-prone code....

Thanks for any info. Just curious.

Well, I don't know for that case, but I can tell you that the classic error checking method with if/else statements is usually faster than the exception handling method. This is because exception handling needs to pass objects through function scope whereas if/else test only check for a variable.
At least, it's what I think. But, usually, the more complex the abstraction is, the slower it is.