using fstream and char arrays, reading junk from file

[Philip Nicoletti]

Are you sure that it is not the debugger that is giving you problems ?
What happens if you just output what you read in:

while(levelFile >> currString)
{
   cout << currString << "\n";
}
levelFile.close();

Also, it would be safer to use a std::string instead of a char array.
That way you do not need to worry about going past the bounds
of the array.