Question

I’ve seen at least two ways of reading lines from a file in C++ tutorials:

std::ifstream fs("myfile.txt");
if (fs.is_open()) {
  while (fs.good()) {
    std::string line;
    std::getline(fs, line);
    // ...

and:

std::ifstream fs("myfile.txt");
std::string line;
while (std::getline(fs, line)) {
  // ...

Of course, I can add a few checks to make sure that the file exists and is opened. Other than the exception handling, is there a reason to prefer the more-verbose first pattern? What’s your standard practice?

Answer 1

while (std::getline(fs, line))
{}

This is not only correct but preferable also because it is idiomatic.

I assume in the first case, you’re not checking fs after std::getline() as if(!fs) break; or something equivalent. Because if you don’t do so, then the first case is completely wrong. Or if you do that, then second one is still preferable as its more concise and clear in logic.

The function good() should be used after you made an attempt to read from the stream; its used to check if the attempt was successful. In your first case, you don’t do so. After std::getline(), you assume that the read was successful, without even checking what fs.good() returns. Also, you seem to assume that if fs.good() returns true, std::getline would successfully read a line from the stream. You’re going exactly in the opposite direction: the fact is that, if std::getline successfully reads a line from the stream, then fs.good() would return true.

The documentation at cplusplus says about good() that,

The function returns true if none of the stream’s error flags (eofbit, failbit and badbit) are set.

That is, when you attempt to read data from an input stream, and if the attempt was failure, only then a failure flag is set and good() returns false as an indication of the failure.

If you want to limit the scope of line variable to inside the loop only, then you can write a for loop as:

for(std::string line; std::getline(fs, line); )
{
   //use 'line'
}

Note: this solution came to my mind after reading @john’s solution, but I think its better than his version.

---

Read a detail explanation here why the second one is preferable and idiomatic:

• Linux | Segmentation Fault in C++ – Due to the function ifstream

Or read this nicely written blog by @Jerry Coffin:

• Reading files