reading input from external files character by character

[Tiawulf]

I'm trying to get this function to read characters from an external file one by one, but i cant seem to get it to work.

when i do "FileIn.get(Ch);" the Ch variable is always ASCII value -52 (the default) and when i switched that to "Ch=FileIn.get();" the Ch variable changed to ASCII -1(it should have been 'M') also every other time i did "Ch=FileIn.get()" it did not change the Ch variable.

can someone please explain what i'm doing wrong?

  int CountLineWordChar(CountsRecord & Data, char File[])
{
   char Ch;							 // current character in stream
   ifstream FileIn;	          // declare FileIn to be input file

    Data.CharCount = 0;
    Data.WordCount = 0;
    Data.LineCount = 0;
    FileIn.open("words.5");

    Ch=FileIn.get();
	++Data.CharCount;
   while(!cin.eof())
   {
		while (!isspace(Ch))
		{
			Ch=FileIn.get();
			++Data.CharCount;
		}
		++Data.WordCount;
		if (Ch=='\n')
			++Data.LineCount;
		Ch=FileIn.get();
		++Data.CharCount;
   }
   if (Data.CharCount>=1)
	   ++Data.LineCount;
   return 1;

[MiiNiPaa]

On which line do you open your file?

[Tiawulf]

it's in the main, should i include that code as well?

[MiiNiPaa]

but FileIn in your CountLineWordChar() function has no relation to your stream in main(). It is not bound to any file at all.

[Tiawulf]

ok, i edited the code block above to include opening (words.5 is the test file) but the result is still the same Ch is indefinitely ASCII -1

[MiiNiPaa]

That usually means that your file is not correctly open or is empty. Check stream state with

if (!FileIn.good())
    std::cerr << "error opening file";

Some points to note:
1) .get() returns not char, but int.
2) Value of said int is 0-255 on success or EOF on failure
3) EOF usually equals to -1.

[Tiawulf]

alright, there is an error opening the file. I'm not sure what it could be though. the file exists, it's in the correct place... is the problem in my code?

[Gkneeus]

it's not open in your function open it in the function or pass it in as a parameter

[Tiawulf]

maybe i'm opening it incorrectly then? is "FileIn.open("filename");" not the correct syntax?

[MiiNiPaa]

You are opening it correctly. However I doubt that your filename is correct.
Do your file really have .5 extension? Or is it a regular text file which have happened to have a name words.5? If so, the filename should be words.5.txt