is use of pointer variable right?

[swapnil_paranja]

hi i have the follwing problem.

i have one function openWriteStream ()

now this function is having protype like

ofstream *openwritestream()

this function opens a file and return the pointer of type ofstream

now i want to open a file andwrite somting to that file so i am trying somthing like this tell me if this is correct?


ofStream *out;
out = openWriteStream ()
*out <<"i want to write this to file";


is it right?and is this piece of code will help in writing to thefile opened by openwritestream?

[jonnin]

this is terrible, really, but yes it will work provided your function allocated the pointer inside it (var = new ofstream)

what is wrong with
ofstream out;
out.open("filename");
out << "text";

which
1) gets rid of potential pointer errors
2) uses debugged, language availble code
3) is faster
4) is easier to read, and easier to write

[Danny]

I odn't see the point in calling a function that does what the fstream class's constructor already does: open the stream. However, if you must use such a function, at least pass the stream object by reference to the function:

int OpenStream (fstream & str);

Then check the return status to see whether the operation succeeded. Again, this is pretty redundant because you don't need to reinvent the wheel here: simply write:

oftsream myofs("myfile.dat");
if (myofs)
myofs<<"my message";