Arizona State University (ASU) CSE100 Principles of Programming with C++ Midterm 1 Practice Exam

The correct method used to open a file in C++ with an ifstream object is 'open()'. This method is specifically designed to establish a connection between the ifstream object and the file you want to read from. When you create an ifstream object, it doesn't automatically open a file; you need to call the open() method explicitly, passing the filename as an argument. This method is vital because it prepares the ifstream object to perform input operations from the specified file.

Using open() is standard practice in file handling within the C++ standard library as it ensures that you can check if the file has opened successfully, allowing for error handling. If the file fails to open, you can detect it using the failure flags provided by the ifstream class.

The other choices do not pertain to the ifstream object's functionality. For example, read() is used to read data from an already opened file but does not open the file itself. Load() is not a standard C++ function related to file streams, and initialize() does not apply in this context for opening files. Hence, the open() method is the correct and necessary choice for establishing a file connection with an ifstream object.