Thread: Reading User Defined Files

the function I use is something (I'm doing this from memory, so it's likely there are mistakes!), like this:

Code:

bool GetFileInfo ( string FileName, string &FileInfo )
{

    ifstream in ( FileName.c_str() );

    if ( in )
    {
        string Temp;
        FileInfo.clear();

        while ( getline( in, Temp ) )
        {
            FileInfo += Temp;
            FileInfo += "\n";
        }

        in.close();
    }
    else
    {
        in.close();
        return false;
    }

    in.close();

    return true;
}

it's VERY handy if you have a program which uses a LOT of file IO. I did a Book/DVD/Music Catloguer the other day, and I think I used that at least 12 times. I have it as a bool so that I can have it in an if statement in my main program, like so:

Code:

string Destination;
if ( GetFileInfo( "MyFile.txt", Destination ) )
{
    cout<< "the file is as follows: " << endl
        << Destination << '\n';
}
else cout<< "Error in opening the file";

instead of having to do the function millions of times.

Another alternative is take much of Twomers' code and turn it into a handy-dandy logging class. That way one class has control over the entire file handling. Not to mention with multiple threads it would be possible to make it thread safe-er. Start it up once during the program runtime, shut it down once, and you are all set. You can flush the output stream for "on-the-fly" updating.

Also, on destruction, you could handle fileclosing so you don't constantly hit the disk opening and closing all the time.