C++ Change output file name if exists

Question

I'm trying to write HTML output file. The file is written and all is well, but I'd like to know if there is a way to take a string with it's file name, check if that exists and if yes then change that string somehow. So I would never overwrite already existing file.

string outputFile;
cin>>outputFile;
ofstream out;
string path ="..\\data\\"+ outputFile+ ".html";
out.open(path.c_str());

So in this case if outputFile is let's say "Jesus" then I want to do something so if I would run this 3 times I'd have something like Jesus.html, Jesus2.html, Jesus3.html. Doesn't necesarilly have to be numbered like that, just any change to that string will do. Is this even possible? I tried this using tmpnam() but I don't really understand how it's supposed to work and if it can even be used.

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

you could check if the file exists with one of the methods mentioned here:

Fastest way to check if a file exist using standard C++/C++11/C?

The complete code would look like this

inline bool file_exists (const std::string& name) {
  struct stat buffer;   
  return (stat (name.c_str(), &buffer) == 0); 
}

while (file_exists(file_name))
    file_name += "_1";