Question

In my C++ application I sometimes create different output files for troubleshooting purposes. Each file is created at a different step of our pipelined operation and it’s hard to know file came before which other one (file timestamps all show the same date).

I’m thinking of adding a global counter in my application, and a function (with multithreading protection) which increments and returns that global counter. Then I can use that counter as part of the filenames I create.

Is this considered bad practice? Many different modules need to create files and they’re not necessarily connected to each other.

Answer 1

I think, adding to file name current system time with high enough precision will be cleaner and easier to implement and maintain

//helper function to encapsulate details
string makeFileName(string filename)
{ return filename + getCurrentTime(); }

void MyClass::SomeMethod()
{
   File f = CreateFile(makeFileName("myclassfile"));
   ...
}