Question

The following causes a bug because file.eof() apparently doesn’t return true until a read past the end of the file. How should I be doing this?

std::ifstream file("something.stuff", std::ios::in|std::ios::binary);

while(!file.eof())
{
    double x, y, z;
    file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&x), sizeof(x));  //  Do I need to check if(file) after every read?
    file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&y), sizeof(y));
    file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&z), sizeof(z));

    // Do something with xyz
}

Answer 1

You can just check it after all the reads, unless you intend to do something with partial data, so:

while(true)
{
    double x, y, z;
    file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&x), sizeof(x));
    file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&y), sizeof(y));
    file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&z), sizeof(z));

    if (!file)
        break;

    // Do something with xyz
}