Opening and Closing Files (Cont.)

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This course will heavily use the file operations of C++. The following hierarchy shows the classes for input and output operations of C++.

iostream hierarchy of classes (char instantiation): ios_base, ios, istream, ostream, iostream, streambuf, ifstream, fstream, ofstream, filebuf, istringstream, stringstream, ostringstream, stringbuf

Line-by-ling analysis of the previous C++ program is given as follows:

• #include <fstream>
  A stream is an abstraction that represents a device in which input and output operations are performed. The classes fstream, ifstream, and ofstream are defined in fstream:
  • fstream is a file input/output stream class.
  • ifstream is a file input stream class.
  • ofstream is a file output stream class.


• #include <iostream>
  It instructs the compiler to include the declarations of the standard input and output facilities such as cin, cout, cerr, and clog.


• #include <cstdlib>
cstdlib is a general purpose standard C library, including memory allocation, process control, conversions and others.