BASICS OF FILE HANDLING IN C++

BEGINNER LEVEL
BY: MUHAMMAD OSAMA AHMED
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• BASICS OF COMPUTER FILE

• CREATING A FILE FROM C++ PROGRAM
• READING A FILE IN C++ PROGRAM

2
 WHAT IS A FILE
• A FILE IS A COLLECTION OF INFORMATION, USUALLY STORED ON A
COMPUTER’S DISK. INFORMATION CAN BE SAVED TO FILES AND THEN LATER
REUSED.
• FILE - ITSELF A BUNCH OF BYTES STORED ON SOME STORAGE DEVICES.

FILE NAMES
• ALL FILES ARE ASSIGNED A NAME THAT IS USED FOR IDENTIFICATION
PURPOSES BY THE OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE USER.
 FILE TYPES AND EXTENSION
• THERE ARE MANY TYPES OF FILES
eg.: .MP3 (AUDIO FILE) .MP4 (VIDEO FILE)
.BAT (BATCH FILE) .EXE (EXECUTABLE FILE)
.PY (PYTHON FILE) etc.
• BUT IN THIS SECTION WE’LL TALK ABOUT A PLAIN TEXT FILE
eg. data.txt
HERE “.txt” IS AN EXTENSION OF THIS FILE AND EXTENSION DETERMINES THE
TYPE OF FILE
 WHY TO USE FILES

• CONVENIENT WAY TO DEAL LARGE QUANTITIES OF DATA.

• STORE DATA PERMANENTLY (UNTIL FILE IS DELETED).
• AVOID TYPING DATA INTO PROGRAM MULTIPLE TIMES.
• SHARE DATA BETWEEN PROGRAMS.
 REMEMBER

• TO PERFORM FILE PROCESSING IN C++, <fstream> MUST BE INCLUDED AS A

HEADER FILE.

• A STREAM IS USED TO REFER TO THE FLOW OF DATA FROM A PARTICULAR

DEVICE TO THE PROGRAM’S

• STREAMS ACT AS AN INTERFACE BETWEEN FILES AND PROGRAMS. IN C++ .

PROGRAM TO CREATE AND ADD TEXT TO A TEXT FILE
PROGRAM TO READ A TEXT FILE
OUTPUT
 CONCLUSION

• IN THIS PRESENTATION WE HAVE LEARNT HOW TO CREATE AND READ A TEXT

FILE FROM C++ PROGRAM.
• JUST LIKE THAT TEXT FILE, WE CAN CREATE OTHER TYPES OF FILES TOO BY
CHANGING FILE EXTENSION.
 THANK YOU
FOR ATTENDING THIS PRESENTATION

SPECIAL THANKS TO
TEACHER: ENGR. DARAKHSHAN SYED