I have a very simple class, the prototype of which is shown below:

namespace Eden {


// log file results
typedef enum tagLogFileResult{LOGFILE_ERROR=0,
							  LOGFILE_OK,
							  LOGFILE_COULDNOTWRITE,
							  LOGFILE_COULDNOTOPEN} LogFileResult;

// EDEN_API = __declspec(dllexport) for compiling engine
// and __declspec(dllimport) for users of the engine
class EDEN_API CLogFile
{
private:
	std::ofstream OutputFile;
public:
	/*CLogFile(const CLogFile&);
	CLogFile();
	~CLogFile();*/
	LogFileResult Open(const std::string c_FileName_);
	void Close();			
	LogFileResult Write(const EdenChar *cp_acMsg_, ...);
};

}

The compiler (Visual C++ 7) will not generate an asignment operator & copy functions for this class. Which basically means i cant even go LogFile1 = LogFile2 And this is stopping me using a vector for holding an varying size array of log files which is what my object manager needs to do ... Now I have much more complex classes in the engine and the compiler seems to have 0 problems whith generating the operators and methods for those. So fearing some bug in my compiler i wrote my own copy constructor and I get the following error: c:\MikesStuff\Programming\Eden\engine\CLogFile.cpp(53): error C2582: ''operator ='' function is unavailable in ''std::basic_ofstream<_Elem,_Traits>'' with [ _Elem=char, _Traits=std::char_traits ] Is this a design trait of ofstream that you cant assign it to another ofstream or is it my compiler being a little strange or me just being a crap programmer ? Ok I AM using the multi threaded debug dll libaries so the fact that the class resides in a dll and the usage is in a win32 app shouldnt be a problem should it? If I am just misunderstanding basic c++ please say so and tell me off . This is my first major project using Visual C++ compiler so... Thanks in advance.

streams do not have assignment or copy constructors defined, simply because there''s no conceptually reasonable way to duplicate an object that refers to a non-duplicatable resource (like the console).

You COULD use a reference-counted scheme, and have a pointer to the ofstream. Look into the smart pointer classes at http://www.boost.org.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.