checking for file existence

[shadowvillian]

I'm making files to store data for a game I'm making. Theres a box that is going to display all the profiles and you will be able to select one. so how would i check if any files exist when i dont know the name of the file(s)? like there could be like 3 profiles saved and I have to check for those. heres my code so far for making a file if none exists:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    vector<string> PlayerNames;
    vector<bool> FileExists;
    string input;
    string SelectedProfile;
    string directory = "Profiles/";

    int HighScore = 0;


    ofstream file;
    
    //check for existing files here
    //if there are push_back the FileExist vector

    if(FileExists.size() == 0)
    {
        cout << "No profiles found. Enter your name:" << endl;
        cin >> input;

        PlayerNames.push_back(input);
        SelectedProfile = input + ".profile";
        directory = "Profiles/" + SelectedProfile; // the files are in a folder where the .exe is Profiles/someone.profile
    }

    file.open(directory.c_str());

    if(file.is_open())
    {
        file << HighScore << endl;
        file.close();
    }

    else
    {
        cout << "Can't open the file!" << endl;
    }

    return 0;
}

or should I have just one file with all the data on it and somehow be able to read the all the data from in it

[kbw]

You have to decide what a profile file is. If it's name has a certain convetion (like <id>.profile), then you can check if such files exist. You can check a file's info without opening it with stat().

should I have just one file with all the data on it

I don't think that's a good idea.

[shadowvillian]

Well there just going to have a generic name like player1.profile for the name. in the file it will be like this

name
level
score

example

john
1
1000

im still confused how i would check the folder if there are any files. what library is stat from?

[kbw]

You need to traverse the directory to get the filenames. Exactly how you do that depends of the operating system.

stat() is from the standard C library.

See http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/unices/36457/#msg197211

[shadowvillian]

I'm using windows. I see now that it is os dependent. all I want to do is look in a folder that i already know exists and the location. then look at all the files in that folder to open them for data. It still seems easier just to have one file with a predetermined name and just the player data on each line like this:

john 1 1000
bob 3 1550

and just getline each line until there is a white space then break up the data into variables when the user selects what profile they wish to load. this isn't being done in the console but I got that part covered.

[kbw]

Check out FindFirstFile/FindNextFile/FindClose