Question

i have following program to calculate size of file

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main(){

    string line;
    ifstream myfile ("C:\\Users\\7\\Desktop\\example\\text.txt",ios::in | ios::out |ios::binary);
    if (!myfile){
        cout<<"cannot open file";
         exit (1);

    }

     while (!myfile.eof()){
        getline(myfile,line);
        cout<<line<<endl;

     }

     long l,m;
     l=myfile.tellg();
     myfile.seekg(0,ios::end);
     m=myfile.tellg();
     cout<<"size of  text file is:";
     cout<<(m-l)<<"bytes"<<endl;
     myfile.close();

     return 0;

}

for make more clarify in text.txt file i have wrote some copy of information from this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms
but it shows me 0 bytes and why? what is wrong?

Answer 1

You are subtracting the current-file-position (l) from the end-of-file position (m) to get the size. This will work as you expect if the current-file-position is at the start of the file, but as you have just read the entire contents of the file, (l) is “starting” at the end of the file.

Just use the value of (m) rather than (m-l), as files always start at 0.

(Alternatively, before using ftell to get (l), use fseek to move to the start of the file)