How to redirect cin and cout to files?

Question

How can I redirect cin to in.txt and cout to out.txt?

Answer 1

Here is a short code snippet for shadowing cin/cout useful for programming contests:

#include 

using namespace std;

int main() {
    ifstream cin("input.txt");
    ofstream cout("output.txt");

    int a, b;   
    cin >> a >> b;
    cout << a + b << endl;
}

This gives additional benefit that plain fstreams are faster than synced stdio streams. But this works only for the scope of single function.

Global cin/cout redirect can be written as:

#include 

using namespace std;

void func() {
    int a, b;
    std::cin >> a >> b;
    std::cout << a + b << endl;
}

int main() {
    ifstream cin("input.txt");
    ofstream cout("output.txt");

    // optional performance optimizations    
    ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);
    std::cin.tie(0);

    std::cin.rdbuf(cin.rdbuf());
    std::cout.rdbuf(cout.rdbuf());

    func();
}

Note that ios_base::sync_with_stdio also resets std::cin.rdbuf. So the order matters.

See also Significance of ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false); cin.tie(NULL);

Std io streams can also be easily shadowed for the scope of single file, which is useful for competitive programming:

#include 

using std::endl;

std::ifstream cin("input.txt");
std::ofstream cout("output.txt");

int a, b;

void read() {
    cin >> a >> b;
}

void write() {
    cout << a + b << endl;
}

int main() {
    read();
    write();
}

But in this case we have to pick std declarations one by one and avoid using namespace std; as it would give ambiguity error:

error: reference to 'cin' is ambiguous
     cin >> a >> b;
     ^
note: candidates are: 
std::ifstream cin
    ifstream cin("input.txt");
             ^
    In file test.cpp
std::istream std::cin
    extern istream cin;  /// Linked to standard input
                   ^

See also How do you properly use namespaces in C++?, Why is "using namespace std" considered bad practice? and How to resolve a name collision between a C++ namespace and a global function?