Cannot open file with relative path? (C++ ifstream) - c++

Question

I know this seems like a simple question, but I tried everything I can think of to no avail to something that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.
This is a small C++ program that opens a file. When I open it with its absolute filepath, it works fine. With a relative path, however, it stops working.
Here's the file path of the program and the files I'm trying to read:
C++ program: "/Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/Lab0/main.cpp"
Files: /Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/Lab0/result.txt, /Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/Lab0/dict.txt
Here's the code snippet:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) {
// string dict_filename = "/Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/Lab0/dict.txt";
// string result_filename = "/Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/Lab0/result.txt";
string dict_filename_string = "dict.txt";
string result_filename_string = "result.txt";
const char* dict_filename = dict_filename_string.c_str();
const char* result_filename = result_filename_string.c_str();
// open files
ifstream dict_file(dict_filename, ifstream::in);
ifstream result_file(result_filename, ifstream::in);
if (!dict_file || !result_file) {
cerr << "File could not be opened." << endl;
exit(1);
}
}
Result of execution
File could not be opened.
I'm sure I've done all the includes right, and the data types right for the ifstream constructor arguments. The only thing I can think of worth mentioning is the system I'm on: I'm on a Mac and I'm using XCode6 as my IDE.
Also, I've tried to move the files' location (results.txt and dict.txt) to these locations to no avail:
/Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/Lab0/
/Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/Lab0/
/Users/Baggio/C++/Lab0/
/Users/Baggio/C++/
Thanks for your help guys!! Any suggestions or thoughts appreciated.

Answer 1

Print out your current working directory when you run the program:
char buffer[256];
char *val = getcwd(buffer, sizeof(buffer));
if (val) {
std::cout << buffer << std::endl;
}
This will tell you where you are running your program from and thus why the path doesn't match for relative paths. A relative path is relative to the current working directory, not to where your binary is located.
If you want to make the path relative to the location of the binary then you will have to do that yourself. Many programming languages offer this as an option, but it is not built-in to C++. You can do this by finding the executable using the argv[0] from main. Then you need to drop the file component of the executable path and replace it with the file name that you are interested in.
Since C++17, you can use std::filesystem::current_path() instead of getcwd.
std::cout << std::filesystem::current_path() << std::endl;