Object Oriented Programming with C++, Second Edition

14.4 TEXT FILES

Text files consist of characters. Text files are line oriented. In Windows Operating System, character newline (‘\n’) represents the end of line¹. Text files can be opened either for input or for output.

If we want to open a text file for reading, we have to create an object of ifstream class. There are two methods to open a file for reading.

A) Use a suitable² constructor of ifstream class.

ifstream f1(“salary.txt”);

B) Create a file stream object with default constructor and then call a method open() with it. For example:

ifstream f1;

f1.open(“f1in.txt”);

Here f1 is the object of the class ifstream. It is a user defined name. It calls the member function open() which takes the parameter as file name “f1in.txt” which is also ...