Question

I am just trying to open this file and use the getline function to read from the file but I cant seem to figure out why it is not working. I have stepped through it many times and the fileOpen variable is being loaded correctly with the file im trying to open, so Im unsure on why it wont open, to use getline with it. I would just like to be able to read through the file with getline, all of this is done in a recursive function to eventually read through all the files in directories. Let me know if you need more information on what exactly im doing.

string line;
ifstream file;
string fileOpen;
bf::directory_iterator dirIter ( fullPath ); //fullPath is type bf::path, passed into the function
fileOpen = (dirIter->path().filename());

file.open(fileOpen);
getline(file, line);

Answer 1

The path::filename function returns the base filename. If you have a path of “foo\bar.txt”, path::filename will return “bar.txt”. So unless “foo\” is in the current directory, the file probably doesn’t exist.

What you’re more likely looking for is this:

file.open(dirIter->path().native());

Or, you can use the boost::filesystem iostream types:

#include <boost/filesystem/fstream>

bf::ifstream file;
bf::directory_iterator dirIter ( fullPath ); //fullPath is type bf::path, passed into the function
file.open(dirIter->path());