Teach Yourself Borland C++ in 14 Days - portal

128 Day 4
NOTE
This will open the file in binary mode and move the file pointer to the end of the file. Any
new data will be written to the end of the file.
Binary files are treated differently than text files (see the binary specifier
in Table 4.1). To read binary files, you will have to have an understanding
of the read(), write(), put(), and get() functions. We don’t
have the time to go into each of those functions at this point. If you
need more information on binary file operations, you might want to
get a good book on C++ that covers file I/O in detail.
Basic file I/O is pretty easy, really. But as I said earlier, if you need to do complicated file
I/O, you are going to have to tie into the online help or get hold of a good book on file I/O
in C++ (again, Teach Yourself Borland C++ 4.5 in 21 Days, Second Edition by Sams Publishing
is a good bet).
Summary
Today you have learned about classes in C++. A well-designed class is easy to use and saves
many programming hours. I’d even go so far as to say that a well-designed class is a joy to
use—especially when it’s of your own creation. Early in the chapter you learned about some
of the features of functions that are specific to C++. You learned about function overloading,
virtual functions, inline functions, and default parameters in functions. All these are heavily
used in designing classes in C++. Finally, the chapter finished up with an introduction to basic
file I/O operations.
The lessons of these first four days are important to understand as you continue through this
book. If it doesn’t make complete sense to you, don’t despair. As we continue through the
following days, you will see these concepts repeated and put to use in programs that have more
practical application than the console apps we’ve been working with thus far.
WARNING
Learning C++ can and will lead to brain overload! It’s natural, and you
shouldn’t worry about it. You might put down this book for the
evening, turn out the lights, and think, “I’ll never get it.” Trust me, you
will.