Opening a file with std::string

Question

This should be a fairly trivial problem. I'm trying to open an ofstream using a std::string (or std::wstring) and having problems getting this to work without a messy conversion.

std::string path = ".../file.txt";

ofstream output;

output.open(path);

Ideally I don't want to have to convert this by hand or involve c-style char pointers if there's a nicer way of doing this?

G S · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-08 15:31:58Z

9

In the path string, use two dots instead of three.

Also you may use 'c_str()' method on string to get the underlying C string.

output.open(path.c_str());

answered Feb 8, 2009 at 15:31

G S

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crashmstr · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-08 15:33:00Z

2

this should work:

output.open(path.c_str())

answered Feb 8, 2009 at 15:33

crashmstr

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Comments

Assaf Lavie · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-08 15:39:38Z

0

I'm afraid it's simply not possible. You have to use c_str, and yes, it sucks.

Incidentally, using char* also means fstream has no support for Unicode file names... a shame.

answered Feb 8, 2009 at 15:39

Assaf Lavie

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4 Comments

KTC Over a year ago

wfstream for std::wstring anyone?

KeithB Over a year ago

No need for a special stream type, just overload open() to take a std::wstring.

Assaf Lavie Over a year ago

basic_fstream's constructor accepts only const char * (never wchar_t). See the standard: 27.8.1.6

KeithB Over a year ago

@Assaf - I know what is in the standard, I was replying to KTC's comment about making another stream class, which doesn't make sense.

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