How to get error message when ifstream open fails

Every system call that fails update the errno value.

Thus, you can have more information about what happens when a ifstream open fails by using something like :

cerr << "Error: " << strerror(errno);

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However, since every system call updates the global errno value, you may have issues in a multithreaded application, if another system call triggers an error between the execution of the f.open and use of errno.

On system with POSIX standard:

errno is thread-local; setting it in one thread does not affect its value in any other thread.

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Edit (thanks to Arne Mertz and other people in the comments):

e.what() seemed at first to be a more C++-idiomatically correct way of implementing this, however the string returned by this function is implementation-dependant and (at least in G++'s libstdc++) this string has no useful information about the reason behind the error...

You could try letting the stream throw an exception on failure:

std::ifstream f;
//prepare f to throw if failbit gets set
std::ios_base::iostate exceptionMask = f.exceptions() | std::ios::failbit;
f.exceptions(exceptionMask);

try {
  f.open(fileName);
}
catch (std::ios_base::failure& e) {
  std::cerr << e.what() << '\n';
}

e.what(), however, does not seem to be very helpful:

• I tried it on Win7, Embarcadero RAD Studio 2010 where it gives "ios_base::failbit set" whereas strerror(errno) gives "No such file or directory."
• On Ubuntu 13.04, gcc 4.7.3 the exception says "basic_ios::clear" (thanks to arne)

If e.what() does not work for you (I don't know what it will tell you about the error, since that's not standardized), try using std::make_error_condition (C++11 only):

catch (std::ios_base::failure& e) {
  if ( e.code() == std::make_error_condition(std::io_errc::stream) )
    std::cerr << "Stream error!\n"; 
  else
    std::cerr << "Unknown failure opening file.\n";
}