Hi, If I use the fstream i/o lib, how do I scan for file errors? In particular when a file does not exist. I have looked everywhere in the MS VC++ help and cannot find a method. fstream f,mat; f.open("list.txt",ios::in); //MessageBox(hdwnd,result,"",MB_OK); if(ios::fail!=0)MessageBox(hdwnd,"W","e",MB_OK); while (!f.eof()) { f.getline(part[x],15,''\t''); f.getline(description[x],50,''\n''); x++; } ListLoad=true; f.close(); My code is as above. Thanks Indy

Isn''t that it right there? Won''t the condition ios::fail != 0 fail if the file doesn''t exist?

Anyway, won''t this do the trick?

fstream f, mat;f.open("list.txt", ios::in);if(f.is_open()){ while(!f.eof()) { f.getline(part[x], 15, ''\t''); f.getline(description[x], 50, ''\n''); ++x; // gee, I hope x is initialized somewhere =) } ListLoad = true; f.close();}else MessageBox(hwnd, "Load failed", "", MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);

fstream will equal NULL if the file was not opened

if tFile was an fstream, then you would put

if(!tFile)

to test if it opened