cleaning a string

[liquidfuzz]

I have a function that reads a file and puts the content into a string. I like to clean the string so there's not white space and such. I tried ws >> but it didn't cut the cheese. If any one helped me I'd be --> :-D

string file2String(const string &fileName)
{
    ifstream ifs(fileName.c_str(), ios::in | ios::binary | ios::ate);
	if(!ifs)
	{
		cerr << "Error : File could not be opened." << endl;
		exit(1);
	}

	ifstream::pos_type fileSize = ifs.tellg();
	ifs.seekg(0, ios::beg);
	ifs >> ws;							//would like to remove whitespace, line breaks and such...
	vector<char> bytes(fileSize);
	ifs.read(&bytes[0], fileSize);

	return string(&bytes[0], fileSize);
}

[LB]

You can have a read-into string and a total string. Constantly read into the read-into string using the formatted >> operator because it ignores whitespace, and then add the read-into string to the total string. ;)