How do you open a file in C++?

You need to use an ifstream if you just want to read (use an ofstream to write, or an fstream for both).

To open a file in text mode, do the following:

ifstream in("filename.ext", ios_base::in); // the in flag is optional

To open a file in binary mode, you just need to add the "binary" flag.

ifstream in2("filename2.ext", ios_base::in | ios_base::binary ); 

Use the ifstream.read() function to read a block of characters (in binary or text mode). Use the getline() function (it's global) to read an entire line.

There are three ways to do this, depending on your needs. You could use the old-school C way and call fopen/fread/fclose, or you could use the C++ fstream facilities (ifstream/ofstream), or if you're using MFC, use the CFile class, which provides functions to accomplish actual file operations.

All of these are suitable for both text and binary, though none have a specific readline functionality. What you'd most likely do instead in that case is use the fstream classes (fstream.h) and use the stream operators (<< and >>) or the read function to read/write blocks of text:

int nsize = 10;
std::vector<char> somedata(nsize);
ifstream myfile;
myfile.open("<path to file>");
myfile.read(somedata.data(), nsize);
myfile.close();

Note that, if you're using Visual Studio 2005 or higher, traditional fstream may not be available (there's a new Microsoft implementation, which is slightly different, but accomplishes the same thing).

Follow the steps,

1. Include Header files or name space to access File class.
2. Make File class object Depending on your IDE platform ( i.e, CFile,QFile,fstream).
3. Now you can easily find that class methods to open/read/close/getline or else of any file.

CFile/QFile/ifstream m_file;
m_file.Open(path,Other parameter/mood to open file);

For reading file you have to make buffer or string to save data and you can pass that variable in read() method.

**#include<fstream> //to use file
#include<string>  //to use getline
using namespace std;
int main(){
ifstream file;
string str;
file.open("path the file" , ios::binary | ios::in);
while(true){
   getline(file , str);
   if(file.fail())
       break;
   cout<<str;
}
}**

fstream are great but I will go a little deeper and tell you about RAII.

The problem with a classic example is that you are forced to close the file by yourself, meaning that you will have to bend your architecture to this need. RAII makes use of the automatic destructor call in C++ to close the file for you.

Update: seems that std::fstream already implements RAII so the code below is useless. I'll keep it here for posterity and as an example of RAII.

class FileOpener
{
public:
    FileOpener(std::fstream& file, const char* fileName): m_file(file)
    { 
        m_file.open(fileName); 
    }
    ~FileOpeneer()
    { 
        file.close(); 
    }

private:
    std::fstream& m_file;
};

You can now use this class in your code like this:

int nsize = 10;
char *somedata;
ifstream myfile;
FileOpener opener(myfile, "<path to file>");
myfile.read(somedata,nsize);
// myfile is closed automatically when opener destructor is called

Learning how RAII works can save you some headaches and some major memory management bugs.