How to redirect cin and cout to files?

Question

How can I redirect cin to in.txt and cout to out.txt?

Answer 1

Here is an working example of what you want to do. Read the comments to know what each line in the code does. I've tested it on my pc with gcc 4.6.1; it works fine.

#include 
#include 
#include 

void f()
{
    std::string line;
    while(std::getline(std::cin, line))  //input from the file in.txt
    {
        std::cout << line << "\n";   //output to the file out.txt
    }
}
int main()
{
    std::ifstream in("in.txt");
    std::streambuf *cinbuf = std::cin.rdbuf(); //save old buf
    std::cin.rdbuf(in.rdbuf()); //redirect std::cin to in.txt!

    std::ofstream out("out.txt");
    std::streambuf *coutbuf = std::cout.rdbuf(); //save old buf
    std::cout.rdbuf(out.rdbuf()); //redirect std::cout to out.txt!

    std::string word;
    std::cin >> word;           //input from the file in.txt
    std::cout << word << "  ";  //output to the file out.txt

    f(); //call function


    std::cin.rdbuf(cinbuf);   //reset to standard input again
    std::cout.rdbuf(coutbuf); //reset to standard output again

    std::cin >> word;   //input from the standard input
    std::cout << word;  //output to the standard input
}

You could save and redirect in just one line as:

auto cinbuf = std::cin.rdbuf(in.rdbuf()); //save and redirect

Here std::cin.rdbuf(in.rdbuf()) sets std::cin's buffer to in.rdbuf() and then returns the old buffer associated with std::cin. The very same can be done with std::cout — or any stream for that matter.

Hope that helps.