Delete File associated with fstream

[Lil'Hasher]

Hi,

In my program i have an fstream that creates a file "myfile.txt" in a directory. ie.

fstream file;
file.open("myfile.txt", ios:: out | ios::i n);

I was just wondering if there was anyway to delete that file "myfile.txt" from the directory within my program? I dont want it to exist after the program finishes executing.

[PaulWendt]

I've done something similar. Are you familiar with the "Resource
Acquisition Is Initialization" programming paradigm? What it
basically means in C++ is that you acquire a resource as part of
an object's construction and you relinquish the resource as a part
of that objects destruction. So, what you can do is have a
wrapper class called TempFile or something like that. The
constructor of TempFile would open the file you need. TempFile
would also provide a method to get at the output file object; you
could even leave the ofstream object public if you wanted.
Then, the destructor of TempFile would delete the path referenced
by the oftream object [after closing it, of course].

Is this description adequate?

[Lil'Hasher]

Hi Paul,
I think I understand what your saying, however i'm still unclear as to what the C++ syntax would be to do something like "destructor of TempFile would delete the path referenced
by the oftream object [after closing it, of course]." ie. what is the syntax to delete the path referenced by the ofstream?...I cant seem to find anything like that in the ofstream methods.

thanks

[Mike Harnad]

How about using a plain old "remove()" function?

[Bob Davis]

There may be a better way to do this.

Store the path of the filename in a std::string inside your TempFile class. Write your destructor like this:

// file = ofstream object
// fileName = file path
~Tempfile()
{
     if (file.is_open()) file.close();
     remove(fileName);
}

I don't know if there's a less-C way to do it, without using remove(), but that should do the job.

[Andreas Masur]

Originally posted by Lil'Hasher
Hi Paul,
I think I understand what your saying, however i'm still unclear as to what the C++ syntax would be to do something like "destructor of TempFile would delete the path referenced
by the oftream object [after closing it, of course]." ie. what is the syntax to delete the path referenced by the ofstream?...I cant seem to find anything like that in the ofstream methods.
thanks

#include <fstream>
#include <string>

class CFoo
{
public:
  CFoo(std::string strFile)
  {
    m_strFile = strFile;

    // Open file
    m_ofstrFile.open(m_strFile);
  }

  ~CFoo()
  {
    // Close file
    m_ofstrFile.close();

    // Delete file
    remove(m_strFile);
  }
  
private:
  std::string   m_strFile;
  std::ofstream m_ofstrFile;
};