All I want to do is open text file ''tstfile.txt'' in the subdirectory ''data''. project\data\tstfile.txt that simple. I want to read the first string of text out of there, which is: data\hull.bmp but no matter where I tell file.open to get tstfile.txt from, it won''t open it and it will give me ''no file found'' message. code: fstream file; file.open( "data\tstfile.txt", ios::in/ios::nocreate ); if ( !file ) { MessageBox( NULL, "No File", "INFO", NULL ); return 0; } can somebody compile this, and run it to make sure it works?

C/C++ uses ''\'' as an escape character for things like ''\n'' for newline and ''\t'' for tab. So when using it for path names you have to use \\. So you''d have "data\\tstfile.txt"


Andrew