C++ file handling, is_open returning bad - c++

Question

If I include the if test in my code the error message is returned and I'm not sure why.
and when it's not used, my program get's stuck in a loop where it never reaches the end of the file. I don't understand what's going wrong.
int countlines()
{
fstream myfile;
myfile.open("questions.txt", ios::in);
string contents;
int linenumber = 0;
//if (myfile.is_open())
// {
while (!myfile.eof())
{
getline( myfile, contents );
if (contents != "")
{
linenumber++;
}
}
cout << "there are " << linenumber << " lines.\n";
//}else {cout<<"Unable to get file.\n";}
myfile.close();
return(linenumber);
}

Answer 1

What's going on is that your file is not being opened. That's why is_open fails.
Then, when you comment out the check, you're breaking your loop because you're iterating incorrectly (see my comment) and not detecting stream failures (.eof() will never be true on that stream).
Make sure that the file is in the right place, and that it is accessible.

Answer 2

The correct idiom for reading a file line-by-line in C++ is using a loop like this:
for (std::string line; std::getline(file,line);)
{
// process line.
}
Inserting this in your example (+fixing indentation and variable names) gives something like this:
int countlines(const std::string& path)
{
// Open the file.
std::ifstream file(path.c_str());
if (!file.is_open()) {
return -1; // or better, throw exception.
}
// Count the lines.
int count = 0;
for (std::string line; std::getline(file,line);)
{
if (!line.empty()) {
++count;
}
}
return count;
}
Note that if you don't intend to process the line contents, you can actually skip processing them using std::streambuf_iterator, which can make your code look like:
int countlines(const std::string& path)
{
// Open the file.
std::ifstream file(path.c_str());
if (!file.is_open()) {
return -1; // or better, throw exception.
}
// Refer to the beginning and end of the file with
// iterators that process the file character by character.
std::istreambuf_iterator<char> current(file);
const std::istreambuf_iterator<char> end;
// Count the number of newline characters.
return std::count(current, end, '\n');
}
The second version will completely bypass copying the file contents and avoid allocating large chunks of memory for long lines.

Answer 3

When using std::istream and std::ostream (whose std::fstream implements), the recommended usage is to directly use the stream in a bool context instead of calling eof() function because it only return true when you managed to read until the last byte of the file. If there was any error before that, the function will still return true.
So, you should have written your code as:
int countlines() {
ifstream myfile;
int linenumber = 0;
string linecontent;
myfile.open("question.txt", ios::in);
while (getline(myfile, linecontent)) {
if (!linecontent.empty()) {
++linenumber;
}
}
return linenumber;
}

Answer 4

Try the following code. It will also (hopefully) give you an idea why the file open is failing...
int countlines()
{
ifstream myfile;
myfile.open("questions.txt");
string contents;
int linenumber = 0;
if (myfile.is_open())
{
while (getline(myfile, contents))
{
if (contents != "")
linenumber++;
}
cout << "there are " << linenumber << " lines." << endl;
myfile.close();
}
else
cout << "Unable to get file (reason: " << strerror(errno) << ")." << endl;
return linenumber;
}