C++ Primer Plus

The C++ facilities for file input and output are based on the same basic class definitions that cin and cout are based on, so this chapter uses the discussion of console I/O (keyboard and screen) as a springboard to investigating file I/O.

The ANSI/ISO C++ standards committee has worked to make C++ I/O more compatible with existing C I/O, and this has produced some changes from traditional C++ practices.

An Overview of C++ Input and Output

Most computer languages build input and output into the language itself. For example, if you look through the lists of keywords for languages such as BASIC and Pascal, you see that PRINT statements, writeln statements, and the like are part of the language vocabulary. But neither C nor C++ has built input and output into the language. If you look through the keywords for these languages, you find for and if but nothing relating to I/O. C originally left I/O to compiler implementers. One reason for this was to give implementers the freedom to design I/O functions that best fit the hardware requirements of the target computer. In practice, most implementers based I/O on a set of library functions originally developed for the Unix environment. ANSI C formalized recognition of this I/O package, called the Standard Input/Output package, by making it a mandatory component of the standard C library. C++ also recognizes this package, so if you’re familiar with the family of C functions declared in the stdio.h file, you can use them in C++ programs. (Newer implementations use the cstdio header file to support these functions.)

However, C++ relies on a C++ solution rather than a C solution to I/O, and that solution is a set of classes defined in the iostream (formerly iostream.h) and fstream (formerly fstream.h) header files. This class library is not part of the formal language definition (cin and istream are not keywords); after all, a computer language defines rules for how to do things, such as create classes, and doesn’t define what you should create by following those rules. But just as C implementations come with a standard library of functions, C++ comes with a standard library of classes. At first, that standard class library was an informal standard consisting solely of the classes defined in the iostream and fstream header files. The ANSI/ISO C++ committee decided to formalize this library as a standard class library and to add a few more standard classes, such as those discussed in Chapter 16, “The string Class and the Standard Template Library.” This chapter discusses standard C++ I/O. But first, let’s examine the conceptual framework for C++ I/O.

Streams and Buffers

A C++ program views input or output as a stream of bytes. On input, a program extracts bytes from an input stream, and on output, a program inserts bytes into the output stream. For a text-oriented program, each byte can represent a character. More generally, the bytes can form a binary representation of character or numeric data. The bytes in an input stream can come from the keyboard, but they can also come from a storage device, such as a hard disk, or from another program. Similarly, the bytes in an output stream can flow to the display, to a printer, to a storage device, or to another program. A stream acts as an intermediary between the program and the stream’s source or destination. This approach enables a C++ program to treat input from a keyboard in the same manner it treats input from a file; the C++ program merely examines the stream of bytes without needing to know where the bytes come from. Similarly, by using streams, a C++ program can process output in a manner independent of where the bytes are going. Managing input, then, involves two stages:

• Associating a stream with an input to a program

• Connecting the stream to a file

In other words, an input stream needs two connections, one at each end. The file-end connection provides a source for the stream, and the program-end connection dumps the stream outflow into the program. (The file-end connection can be a file, but it can also be a device, such as a keyboard.) Similarly, managing output involves connecting an output stream to the program and associating some output destination with the stream. It’s like plumbing with bytes instead of water (see Figure 17.1).

Figure 17.1. C++ input and output.