Getting a HANDLE from a std::ofstream

Question

Is it possible to get the underlying file HANDLE from a std::ofstream (Visual C++ 2005)?

This is the opposite of this question:

Can I use CreateFile, but force the handle into a std::ofstream?

The reason I want to so this is to modify attributes of the file (e.g. creation time) without having to open the file with CreateFile.

Answer 1

The C++ standard does not provide any means for specifying or retrieving the raw file descriptors of an ofstream, so I don't believe this is possible. What is possible, though, would be to build a custom streambuf class that implements stream buffering to and from a HANDLE, then to define a custom ostream type that uses that buffer. I'm not sure if that's really what you're looking for, but it is a viable option.