Learning Objectives: Writing

Demonstrate how to open a file and write to it using

ofstream

Explain what happens when you write to a file that does

not exist

Demonstrate how to write multiline strings to a file

Differentiate between input, output, and append modes

Writing to a File

Writing to a File
When writing to a file, you’ll want to use ofstream instead of ifstream. Like
before, create your string path, open the file, and check for whether it can
be opened successfully.

string path = "student/text/practice1.txt";

try {
ofstream file;
file.open(path);
if (!file) {
throw runtime_error("File failed to open.");
}
}

catch (exception& e) { //catch error

cerr << e.what() << endl;
}

If the file is successfully opened, you can start writing to the file using the
insertion operator << followed by what you want to write in double quotes
"". Remember to close the file, and if you want, you can print a message at
the end telling the user that that the file was successfully written to.
 string path = "student/text/practice1.txt";

try {
ofstream file;
file.open(path);
if (!file) {
throw runtime_error("File failed to open.");
}
file << "Hello there";
file.close();
cerr << "Finished writing to file.";
}

catch (exception& e) { //catch error

cerr << e.what() << endl;
}

Click on the link to open the file and see what was wrttien: Open
practice1.txt

challenge

Try these variations:

Open the practice1.txt file after each change to see what gets written.
* Change "Hello there" to "Goodbye".
* Change "Goodbye" in your current code to "".
* Open student in the sidebar on the left. Open the text folder and
right-click on practice1.txt. Select Delete... and YES to delete the file
and then run the program again.

Why is there no error message?

If you tell C++ to create an ofstream file, it will automatically create
that file if one does not exist. Or it will overwrite the existing file with a
new one. This is why you do not see an error message. You will only see
an error message if for some reason the system is not able to create the
file at all.

Open practice1.txt

Reading a Written File

If you want to read from the file after it was written to, you can create an
ifstream to read from the file.
string path = "student/text/practice1.txt";

try {
ofstream file;
file.open(path);
if (!file) {
throw runtime_error("File failed to open.");
}
file << "Hello there";
file.close();

ifstream stream;
string read;
stream.open(path);
while (getline(stream, read)) {
cout << read << endl;
}
stream.close();
}

catch (exception& e) { //catch error

cerr << e.what() << endl;
}

challenge

What happens if you:

Change "Hello there" to "Hi!".
Add file << " My name is AI." << endl; to the line after file <<
"Hi!";?
Multiline Strings

Multiline Strings
In addition to being able to write and output string literals (e.g. file <<
"Hi!";), we can also write and output the content of variables (e.g. file <<
var;). Let’s tweak the code from the previous page to write multiple
messages to a text file called practice2.txt. We’ll create three string
variables, text1, text2, and text3. The first message will go into a string
variable text1, the second will go into text2, and the third will go into
text3.

string path = "student/text/practice2.txt";

try {
ofstream file;
file.open(path);
if (!file) {
throw runtime_error("File failed to open.");
}
string text1 = "Hello, ";
string text2 = "your balance is: ";
string text3 = "12.34";
file << text1 + text2 + text3;
file.close();

ifstream stream;
string read;
stream.open(path);
while (getline(stream, read)) {
cout << read << endl;
}
stream.close();
}

catch (exception& e) { //catch error

cerr << e.what() << endl;
}

Open practice2.txt
 challenge

What happens if you:

Change string text3 = "12.34"; to double text3 = 12.34;?
Change file << text1 + text2 + text3; to file << text1 + text2
<< text3;?
Split the code file << text1 + text2 << text3; into two lines:

file << text1 + text2 << endl;

file << text3;

Change file << text1 + text2 << endl; to file << text1 + text2
<< '\n';?
Change file << text1 + text2 << '\n'; to file << "Hello, your
balance is:\n12.34"; and remove file << text3;?

Open practice2.txt

Notice how you can also write the content of other types of data (double,
int, etc.) to a file. You are not restricted to just strings. Also, there are
multiple ways to write the same kind of content to a file.
Appending to a File

Appending to a File
You may have noticed that every time a file is opened using an ofstream
object, a new file is always created, even if one already exists (the system
just overwrites the existing file). If you want to add to an existing file, you
have to tell C++ to open the file in append mode. Let’s look at the code
below and TRY IT.

string path = "student/text/practice3.txt";

try {
ofstream file;
file.open(path, ios::app); //open file in append mode
if (!file) {
throw runtime_error("File failed to open.");
}
string text = "Adding to the file.";
file << text;
file.close();

ifstream stream;
string read;
stream.open(path);
while (getline(stream, read)) {
cout << read << endl;
}
stream.close();
}

catch (exception& e) { //catch error

cerr << e.what() << endl;
}

Open practice3.txt

Since there is no practice3.txt file at the start of the program, C++ will
create one. However, try running the code again and see what happens.

Open practice3.txt
You’ll notice that the output Adding to the file. shows up twice in the file.
This happens because we have included the tag ios::app as a second
parameter when we opened up the file practice3.txt. By default, an
ofstream object has the flag ios::out as a second parameter, which causes
the file to always get overwritten. By changing the parameter to ios::app,
we’re telling the system to add to the file instead of overwriting it.

challenge

What happens if you:

Change ios::app in the code to ios::out?
Change ios::out to ios::in?
Change file << text; to file << text << text;?
Change file << text << text; to file << "Hello";?
Change ios::in back to ios::app?

Open practice3.txt

If you follow through the challenges above, you’ll notice that when the flag
is set to input mode ios::in, the system will overwrite the content without
creating a new file or overwriting the old one. On the other hand, ios::app
will add to the end of the existing content. Lastly, ios::out creates a
completely new file and writes to it.
Formative Assessment 1
Formative Assessment 2