Problems with streams

[Moose9999]

I actually have a few problems in one with this. First of all, can I make a pointer and assign it to an ifstream? Problem 2: Can I pass a stream to a function.

I need to use a stream in a function, but I thought it might be more elegant to pass the function a pointer that is directed at a stream. The program with the problem is listed below:

Thanks for the help!!

#include <iostream.h>
#include <fstream.h>
#include "mystructs.h"
//this has a "dog" structure with two variables, size and training respectively
using namespace std;
void dog_info_output (int dog_num, ifstream* in_stream);
//In this function def I want to send a pointer to an ifstream and call the pointer in_stream. this function uses an int to iterate a file with two chars of info per dog, works fine without passing a pointer by a different method, but I want to figure out if this one is possible.
int main() {
ofstream out_stream;
ifstream in_stream;
out_stream.open("dogout.txt", ios::app);
in_stream.open("dogout.txt");
int num_dogs;
int i;
cout << "How many dogs? ";
cin >> num_dogs;
cout << endl;
//this creates a pointer called dogarray to a dynamic array of pointers, the same size as num_dogs entered before
dog** dogarray = new dog*[num_dogs];
char _bool = 'F';
for (i = 0; i < num_dogs; i++) {
char size;
char training;
cout << "Is the dog big (b) or small (s)? ";
cin >> size;
cout << '\n' << "Is the dog trained (Y) or not (N)";
cin >> training;
cout << endl;
dogarray[i] = new dog;
dogarray[i]->size = size;
dogarray[i]->training = training;
out_stream << dogarray[i]->size << dogarray[i]->training;
}
ifstream *in_stream_func = in_stream;
//I want to designate a ifstream pointer called in_stream_func and have it point to in_stream

int dognum;
cin >> dognum;
dog_info_output (2 * (dognum - 1), *in_stream_func);
out_stream.close ();
in_stream.close ();


delete []dogarray;

return 0;
}

void dog_info_output (int dognum, ifstream* in_stream) {
char next;
for (dognum; dognum >= 0; dognum--) {
in_stream.get(next);
if (dognum == 0) {
cout << "This dog's size is: " << next << endl;
in_stream.get(next);
cout << "Training: " << next << endl;
}
}
return;
}

[firedraco]

Yes and yes, but I would suggest just passing it by reference instead.

[Moose9999]

Thanks for the advice, I'll look into that for sure!! For now, can anyone help me figure out how to fix my above program by using a pointer to the stream and then passing the pointer to a function?

After I figure this out I'll re-write the program using references instead, I just want to make sure I know how to do this. Right now everything works ok except the in_stream.get statement in my dog_info_output function.

Thanks again all!!