C++: Which is the best method of checking for file existence on windows platform [duplicate]

Answer 1

How about use boost?

if (!boost::filesystem::exists("C:\\MyFile.txt"))
{
    ...
}

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_43_0/libs/filesystem/doc/index.htm

Answer 2

I'd opt to use the iostream because of its platform independence. True, you may be targeting Windows only, but it's never a bad move to use platform-independent libraries. If you're building a big project, you never know what that next phase will entail.

I'm not sure the code above is the best (or correct) way to check for file existence. Try this:

ifstream f;
f.open(str);

if (f.is_open()) {
  // read file
}

Answer 3

Back in the day, all we had was OpenFile (and we were GRATEFUL)

OFSTRUCT of = {0};
of.cBytes = sizeof(of);

HFILE hf = ::OpenFile("c:\\windows\\write.exe",&of,OF_EXIST);

if(hf > 0)
    printf("file exists"); 

return 0;

Answer 4

#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>
using namespace std;

bool FileExists(const TCHAR *fileName)
{
    DWORD       fileAttr;

    fileAttr = GetFileAttributes(fileName);
    if (0xFFFFFFFF == fileAttr && GetLastError()==ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
        return false;
    return true;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{


    if ( FileExists("testtt.txt"))
    {
      cout << "File exists \n";
    }
    else
    {
        cout << "File does not exist \n";

    }


  return 0;
}

Answer 5

There's a nice shell utility function for that, PathFileExists.