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

Question

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++

Sorry about those things - not relevant. I am not getting an error the text from the file is just not coming up — Lucas Smith, Feb 04 '16 at 13:18
Seen [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2602013/read-whole-ascii-file-into-c-stdstring)? — trojanfoe, Feb 04 '16 at 13:23
One thing to note is that the << operator will read the file until the next separator (a space by default), not the whole thing. — Fabio Ceconello, Feb 04 '16 at 13:29

score 46 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 04 '16 at 13:26

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();
}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 27 '18 at 16:27

1

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

int main()
{
    string name ;
    std::ifstream dataFile("file.txt");
    while (!dataFile.fail() && !dataFile.eof() )
    {
          dataFile >> name ;
          cout << name << endl;
    }

answered Mar 27 '18 at 16:27

Muhammad bakr

63
10

2

Could you explain your code? Why is it better than the [accepted answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/35202275/711006)? – Melebius Mar 27 '18 at 17:44
While answering, please mention what is wrong in the actual code posted and what is corrected and why it has to be corrected in that way. Below link will help you. https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer – Prasoon Karunan V Apr 04 '18 at 03:47

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 05 '20 at 14:27

Try this, just modified at some places. You had tried to open a file using extracter (i.e, ifstream) but overwriting this file using inserter (i.e, ofstream) without opening the file, that ifstream and ofstream were two different classes. so, they don't understand.

#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>

using namespace std;

int main(){

    string output;
    ifstream myfile;
    ofstream myfile2;

    string STRING;
    // output stream || inserting
    myfile2.open ("/Volumes/LFARLEIGH/Lucas.txt");

    myfile2 << "Lucas, It Worked";


    myfile2.close();

    // input stream || extracting

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

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


   return 0;
}

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

3 Answers3

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