Reference to an fstream object creating an error - c++

Question

I'm getting an error running a program that demonstrates how file stream objects may be passed by reference to functions. The program fails when making a call to the file.open(name, ios::in) function:
#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>
#include<string>
using namespace std;
//function prototypes
bool openFileIn(fstream &, string);
void showContents(fstream &);
int main(){
fstream dataFile;
if (openFileIn(dataFile, "demofile.txt"))
{
cout << "File opened successfully.\n";
cout << "Now reding data from the file. \n\n";
showContents(dataFile);
dataFile.close();
cout << "\nDone. \n";
}
else
cout <<"File open error! "<< endl;
return 0;
}
//******************************************************************
//Definition of function openFileIn. Accepts a reference to an
//fstream object as an argument. The file is opened for input.
//The function returns true upon success, false upon failure.
//******************************************************************
bool openFileIn(fstream& file, string name)
{
file.open(name, ios::in); //error occurs here
if (file.fail())
return false;
else
return true;
}
//*******************************************************************
//Defintion of function showContents. Accepts an fstream reference
//as its argument. Uses a loop to read each name from the file and
//displays it on the screen.
//*******************************************************************
void showContents(fstream &file)
{
string line;
while(file >> line)
{
cout << line << endl;
}
}
The error occurs in the 'openFileIn()' function. The 'file.open()' call fails with an error.
Here is the stacktrace:

Answer 1

The open function overload taking std::string as parameter, is defined starting from C++11.
You are likely to be using an old compiler, so you need to use the old open signature using const char *.
Try:
file.open(name.c_str(), ios::in);
I'm getting an error running a program that demonstrates how file
stream objects may be passed by reference to functions. The program
fails when making a call to the file.open(name, ios::in) function
Note that your program is not compiling at all. What you see in the output is a compiling error, not a stacktrace.