Open file by its full path in C++

Question

I want the user to give me the full path where the file exists and not just the file name. How do I open the file this way?

Is it something like this:

ifstream file;
file.open("C:/Demo.txt", ios::in);

This doesn't seem to work.

Answer 1

Normally one uses the backslash character as the path separator in Windows. So:

ifstream file;
file.open("C:\\Demo.txt", ios::in);

Keep in mind that when written in C++ source code, you must use the double backslash because the backslash character itself means something special inside double quoted strings. So the above refers to the file C:\Demo.txt.

Answer 2

You can use a full path with the fstream classes. The folowing code attempts to open the file demo.txt in the root of the C: drive. Note that as this is an input operation, the file must already exist.

#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
   ifstream ifs( "c:/demo.txt" );       // note no mode needed
   if ( ! ifs.is_open() ) {                 
      cout <<" Failed to open" << endl;
   }
   else {
      cout <<"Opened OK" << endl;
   }
}

What does this code produce on your system?

Answer 3

The code seems working to me. I think the same with @Iothar.

Check to see if you include the required headers, to compile. If it is compiled, check to see if there is such a file, and everything, names etc, matches, and also check to see that you have a right to read the file.

To make a cross check, check if you can open it with fopen..

FILE *f = fopen("C:/Demo.txt", "r");
if (f)
  printf("fopen success\n");

Answer 4

For those who are getting the path dynamicly... e.g. drag&drop:

Some main constructions get drag&dropped file with double quotes like:

"C:\MyPath\MyFile.txt"

Quick and nice solution is to use this function to remove chars from string:

void removeCharsFromString( string &str, char* charsToRemove ) {
   for ( unsigned int i = 0; i < strlen(charsToRemove); ++i ) {
      str.erase( remove(str.begin(), str.end(), charsToRemove[i]), str.end() );
   }
} 

string myAbsolutepath; //fill with your absolute path
removeCharsFromString( myAbsolutepath, "\"" );

myAbsolutepath now contains just C:\MyPath\MyFile.txt

The function needs these libraries: <iostream> <algorithm> <cstring>.
The function was based on this answer.

Working Fiddle: http://ideone.com/XOROjq

Answer 5

A different take on this question, which might help someone:

I came here because I was debugging in Visual Studio on Windows, and I got confused about all this / vs \\ discussion (it really should not matter in most cases).

For me, the problem was: the "current directory" was not set to what I wanted in Visual Studio. It defaults to the directory of the executable (depending on how you set up your project).

Change it via: Right-click the solution -> Properties -> Working Directory

I only mention it because the question seems Windows-centric, which generally also means VisualStudio-centric, which tells me this hint might be relevant (: