Question

This works:

file.open("Levels\\test.txt");

This doesn’t:

string pathname = "Levels\\test.txt";
file.open(pathname);

It outputs the following error:

no matching function for call to 'std::basic_ifstrea<char, std::char_traits<char> >::open
(std::string&)'

Answer 1

That member function takes a char const*, not a std::string; you would need to pass it pathname.c_str().

(In C++0x, there is an overload of open that takes a std::string, so your code will someday work as is; your implementation apparently does not support this yet.)