ofstream random access not working / developer error

[Lars Uffmann]

AFAIK you can control some aspects of exception throwing in regard to
the state flags, via exceptions(flags) member function in basic_ios.

Thanks, that's all I needed to know, really:
/* ... */
indexFile.exceptions (ios_base::failbit);
try {
indexFile.open (filename, ios_base::binary | ios_base::in | ios_base:ut);
}
catch (exception &e) {
cout << "file not open" << endl;
}
if (!indexFile.is_open()) {
cout << "creating index file" << endl;
indexFile.clear();
indexFile.open (filename, ios_base::binary | ios_base:ut |
ios_base::app);
}
/* ... */

That kinda does what I wanted to do - the only thing I don't like being
that it throws the exception when the failbit is SET - and I really
would have preferred if the exception was thrown when a succeeding
operation failed _because_ of the set failbit :/

That said, I'm pretty flakey about the details.

Np, that's what references are for - you pointed me in the right
direction

Best Regards,

Lars