> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://suyashs-organization-3.gitbook.io/csitlabs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://suyashs-organization-3.gitbook.io/csitlabs/2nd_semester/oop/file_handling_and_streams.md).

# File Access Pointers

* Both istream and ostream provide member functions for repositioning the file-position pointer. These member functions are seekg ("seek get") for istream and seekp ("seek put") for ostream.
* The argument to seekg and seekp normally is a long integer. A second argument can be specified to indicate the seek direction. The seek direction can be ios::beg (the default) for positioning relative to the beginning of a stream, ios::cur for positioning relative to the current position in a stream or ios::end for positioning relative to the end of a stream. // position to the nth byte of fileObject (assumes ios::beg)
* fileObject.seekg( n ); // position n bytes forward in fileObject
* fileObject.seekg( n, ios::cur ); // position n bytes back from end of fileObject
* fileObject.seekg( n, ios::end ); // position at end of fileObject
* fileObject.seekg( 0, ios::end );

## Testing Errors during File Operations

* eof(): returns non-zero (true value) if end-of-file is encountered while reading, otherwise returns zero (false value).
* fail(): returns non-zero when an input or output operation has failed.
* good(): returns non-zero if no error has occurred.
* bad(): returns non-zero if an invalid operation is attempted.