How do I print out the contents of a file? C++ File Stream

c++ iostream fstream
Lucas Farleigh picture Lucas Farleigh · Feb 4, 2016 · Viewed 47.4k times · Source

I am using fstream and C++ and all I want my program to do is to print out to the terminal the contents of my .txt file. It may be simple, but I have looked at many things on the web and I can't find anything that will help me. How can I do this? Here is the code I have so far:

    #include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    string output;
    ifstream myfile;
    ofstream myfile2;

    string STRING;
    myfile.open ("/Volumes/LFARLEIGH/Lucas.txt");

    myfile2 << "Lucas, It Worked";

        myfile >> STRING;
        cout << STRING << endl;
    myfile.close();


    return 0;
}

Thank you in advance. Please forgive me if this is very simple as I quite new to C++

Answer

Sam Varshavchik picture Sam Varshavchik · Feb 4, 2016

There's no reason to reinvent the wheel here, when this functionality is already implemented in the standard C++ library.

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

int main()
{
    std::ifstream f("file.txt");

    if (f.is_open())
        std::cout << f.rdbuf();
}

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