Question

So I tried to do this:

#include <iostream>//For cout/cin
#include <fstream> //For ifstream/ofstream

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    string types[] = {"Creativity", "Action", "Service"};
    for(int i = 0; i < sizeof(types)/sizeof(string); i++) {
        string type = types[i];
        string filename = type + ".html";
        ofstream newFile(filename);
        //newFile << toHTML(getActivities(type));
        newFile.close();
    }
    return 0;
}

and I’m being hit with errors. I’m new to C++, so I don’t know what to try, or if this is even possible (SURELY it is…).
I tried the following, but it was really just a stab in the dark and didn’t help:

#include <iostream>//For cout/cin
#include <fstream> //For ifstream/ofstream

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    string types[] = {"Creativity", "Action", "Service"};
    for(int i = 0; i < sizeof(types)/sizeof(string); i++) {
        string type = types[i];
        //Attempting to add const..
        const string filename = type + ".html";
        ofstream newFile(filename);
        //newFile << toHTML(getActivities(type));
        newFile.close();
    }
    return 0;
}

I mean, its all happy if I do `ofstream newFile(“somefile.html”);

Answer 1

The original IOstream library didn’t have a constructor taking a std::string. The only type supported was char const*. You can get a char const* from a std::string using c_str():

std::string name("whatever");
std::ofstream out(name.c_str());

The type of a string literal isn’t of type std::string but it is of type char const[n] where n is the number of characters in the string, including the terminating null character.

In C++ 2011 the File stream classes are improved to also take std::string where a string is expected.