This is driving my crazy, i cannot seem to compile a fstream correctly, i have no idea what iam doing wrong, so can someone please, please help Thanks The problem is that no matter what i do, either fstream or ifstream comes up ans an ambiguous symbal or, ios::nocreate is not recognised anyone got any ideas!! I think the problem is either in my header arrangement, or the code line!! so here both: in StdAfx.h #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN #define DIRECTINPUT_VERSION 0x0300 #pragma comment(lib, "opengl32.lib") #pragma comment(lib, "glu32.lib") #pragma comment(lib, "glaux.lib") #pragma comment(lib, "winmm.lib") #pragma comment(lib, "dxguid.lib") #pragma comment(lib, "dinput.lib") #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include using namespace std; typedef unsigned char byte; typedef unsigned short word; #include "Vector3D.h" #include "Vector2D.h" in the cpp file it is needed in fstream file(sFileName.c_str(), ios::in || ios::nocreate); if someone spots anything id appreciate it!! Cheers Paul.

Lose the .h on your fstream:

#include &ltfstream> 

I have done that, it fixed the ambiguous symbol problem but now i cannot use the ios::nocreate flag, which i need as iam not tring to create new files!!

Any ideas