File Handling Lab · Object Oriented Programming

File Handling Lab

CSC-166 · Semester II · Object Oriented Programming

intermediate30 minAvailable

C++in-browser interpreter · runs locally

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main() {
  string name;
  cout << "Enter a name: ";
  cin >> name;
  cout << "Saved record: " << name << " (line 1)" << endl;
  return 0;
}

12 lines

Output

Write some code, then press Run. Stdout and errors appear here.

Lab brief

Objective

Write, read and search records in a file, combining text files, binary files and random access.

Theory & concepts

Text files are easy to inspect; binary files are compact and let you store whole structures. With fixed-size records and seekg, you can jump to record n without reading everything before it.

Rendering diagram…

Text, binary and random-access file handling

in.seekg(n * sizeof(Student), ios::beg);
in.read((char*)&s, sizeof(s));
while (in >> name >> marks) { ... }

Prerequisites

Lesson: Writing and reading text files
Lesson: Binary files
Lesson: Random access with seekg and seekp

Instructions

1Write three student records to a text file and read them back with a loop.
2Write the same records to a binary file using write().
3Read record index 1 directly with seekg and print it.
4Compute the file size with seekg(0, ios::end) and tellg().
5Handle a missing file gracefully and print an error message.

Tasks

Text round trip
Write then read the records and confirm identical output.
Binary round trip
Write with write(), read with read(), and verify fields.
Random record access
Read the second record directly without scanning the first.

Self-check

Text and binary round trips preserve all fields.
seekg reads the requested record correctly.
File size matches 3 * sizeof(Student).

Environment

editorstdout consolecompiler errorsfile input/output