files question

Hi, I nee to write program that will arange my text files.
Every row in file is supposed to begin with '{'. If it is not the case then
I need the row that begin with every other character to place in current line
not write as new row. So in my result file every line should start with '{'.
I think I manage to do this and test it on one file and it seems to work fine.
I have three question:
1. Is there a better nad more elgant way to handle this
2. Do I have to close files.
3. (Not connected with upper two) When I want to write something in binary file
I open with something like this: ofstream ofs("name",ios_bas:binary);
and want to write I use something like this:
ofs.write((char*)&matrix[i][j],sizeof(double));
My question is way is ti necessary to erite (char *) and what it means?

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
        char current[BUFSIZ];
        char next[BUFSIZ];
        int i=0;
        ifstream in("Bow.sub");
        ofstream out("BowlingPr.sub");
        while(in.getline(current,BUFSIZ,'\n'))
        {
                i++;
                in.getline(next,BUFSIZ,'\n');
                if(current[0]=='{')
                {       
                        if(i!=1)
                                out<<'\n';
                        out<<current;
                }
                else
                {
                        out<<current;
                }
                if(next[0]=='{')
                {
                        out<<'\n';
                }
                out<<next;
               
        }

}

---

http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/smartfaq.cgi (refer level 2 I think that should give you good idea )

Regarding your last question (char *) means "type casting " The concept is similar in C/C++

http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/tut5-4.html
This link should be very helpful for that other try googling for type casting in C++

Hope it helps
Nipun

Nipun

Thanks for reply. I know what is casting but don't know why I need to cast to char * something that is other type. In this case matrix of double numbers