attempting to reference a deleted function

Question

I'm trying to learn about the fstream class and I'm having some trouble. I created a couple of txt files, one with a joke and the other with a punchline (joke.txt) and (punchline.txt) just for the sake of reading in and displaying content. I ask the user for the file name and if found it should open it up, clear the flags then read the content in. but I cant even test what it reads in because I'm currently getting errors regarding a deleted function but I don't know what that means

error 1:

"IntelliSense: function "std::basic_ifstream<_Elem, _Traits>::basic_ifstream(const std::basic_ifstream<_Elem, _Traits>::_Myt &) [with _Elem=char, _Traits=std::char_traits<char>]" (declared at line 818 of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\include\fstream") cannot be referenced -- it is a deleted function

the second error is the exact same but for the 2nd function (displayLastLine())

and error 3:

Error   1   error C2280: 'std::basic_ifstream<char,std::char_traits<char>>::basic_ifstream(const std::basic_ifstream<char,std::char_traits<char>> &)' : attempting to reference a deleted function

and here's my code:

#include "stdafx.h" 
#include <string>    
#include <iostream>  
#include <fstream>   

using namespace std; 

void displayAllLines(ifstream joke);
void displayLastLine(ifstream punchline);

 int main()          
{
    string fileName1, fileName2;
    ifstream jokeFile, punchlineFile;


    // Desribe the assigned project to the User
    cout << "This program will print a joke and its punch line.\n\n";

    cout << "Enter the name of the joke file (ex. joke.txt): ";
    cin  >> fileName1;
    jokeFile.open(fileName1.data());  
    if (!jokeFile)
    {
        cout << "  The file " << fileName1 << " could not be opened." << endl;
    }

    else
    {   
        cout << "Enter name of punch line file (ex. punchline.txt): ";
        cin  >> fileName2;
        punchlineFile.open(fileName2.data());  
        if (!punchlineFile)
        {
            cout << "  The file " << fileName2 << " could not be opened." << endl;
            jokeFile.close();
        }

        else
        {   
            cout << endl << endl; 

            displayAllLines(jokeFile);

            displayLastLine(punchlineFile); 
            cout << endl;

            jokeFile.close();
            punchlineFile.close();
        }
    }


    // This prevents the Console Window from closing during debug mode
    cin.ignore(cin.rdbuf()->in_avail());
    cout << "\nPress only the 'Enter' key to exit program: ";
    cin.get();

    return 0;
}
 void displayAllLines(ifstream joke)
 {
     joke.clear();
     joke.seekg(0L, ios::beg);
     string jokeString;
     getline(joke, jokeString);
     while (!joke.fail())
     {
         cout << jokeString << endl;
     }
 }
 void displayLastLine(ifstream punchline)
 {
     punchline.clear();
     punchline.seekg(0L, ios::end);
     string punchString;
     getline(punchline, punchString);
     while (!punchline.fail())
     {
         cout << punchString << endl;
     }
 }

Answer 1

You do call a deleted function, being the copy constructor of the class std::ifstream.

If you take a look at the reference you notice, that the copy constructor is not allowed.

so instead of using:

void displayAllLines(ifstream joke);
void displayLastLine(ifstream punchline);

you should work with calls by reference:

void displayAllLines(ifstream& joke);
void displayLastLine(ifstream& punchline);

Using a reference will behave just like calling the method with a copy, but in fact you are operating on the original object instead of a new copy-constructed object. Keep that in mind for further use of the call by reference.