Question

The __________ member function reports when the end of the file has been encountered.

Short answer

Answer: The member function is `eof()`.

Step-by-step solution

Introduction to file streams

File streams are objects of classes related to input/output (I/O) in C++ programming. They are used to perform read and write operations on files. The fstream classes, which include ifstream (for input) and ofstream (for output), are part of the C++ standard library. When working with file streams, certain member functions are available to make file I/O easier.

Finding the end-of-file member function

To check if the end of a file has been reached during a read or write operation, the object's member function called `eof()` can be used. This function returns true if the end-of-file (EOF) has been encountered, and false otherwise. Example code snippet: ```cpp #include #include using namespace std; int main() { ifstream inputFile("example.txt"); if (!inputFile) { cout << "Error opening file." << endl; return 1; } string line; while (!inputFile.eof()) { getline(inputFile, line); cout << line << endl; } inputFile.close(); return 0; } ``` In this example, we open a file called `example.txt` for input using an ifstream variable named `inputFile`. If the file fails to open, an error message is displayed. Otherwise, we read the file line by line until its end is reached, using the `!inputFile.eof()` condition in the while loop. The `getline()` function reads each line and stores it into the string variable `line`, which is then output to the console. When the EOF is reached, the loop will exit, and the file is closed using the `close()` member function. So, the member function that reports when the end of the file has been encountered is `eof()`.