simple File I/O question

Hello

Below is a piece of code that opens a file.
if I got readFile(fileName) where "fileName" is a string containing a file the program does not compile.

Code:

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string fileName;
fileName = "blah.txt";

ifstream readFile;

readFile.open(fileName);

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Code:

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ifstream readFile;

readFile.open("blah.txt");

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if I enter the file name directly in quotes it works. How do I specify the file I want to open using a variable?

I've of course #include 'ed string and fstream

Try
readFile.open( fileName.c_str() );

thanks, just found out myself, learn the whole s string part and was a about to reply that I found a solution!

Good to see I was on the right track

Code:

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readFile.open( fileName.c_str() );

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what does the .c_str() do?

The c_str() and data() methods of the string class, returns the string as an array of bytes, like "old" C strings.

string s = "Hello";
char *oldtypestring = s.c_str();

oldtypestring is now "Hello\0"