Why is this not counting correctly? - c++11

Question

I am reading text from a text file and need to know the number of characters in the file in total. I thought this should work but it always seems to be overcounting. For example I typed this into my text file:
thisisatestthisisa
thisisa
And the program returned a total of 32.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <ostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
fstream inFile;
string inputString;
inFile.open("text.txt", ios::in);
unsigned int total = 0;
if (inFile) {
while (inFile)
{
getline(inFile, inputString);
unsigned int tempStringLength = inputString.length();
total += tempStringLength;
}
cout << "total is: " << total << endl;
}
else {
cerr << "Unable to open file text.txt";
exit(1);
}
return 0;
}

Answer 1

You are double-counting the last line in the file.
Because you are using while(inFile) instead of while(getline(inFile, inputString)) the stream's state is not invalidated until the call to getline(...):
Walking through the loop will make this obvious:
Iteration 1:
unsigned int total = 0;
//...
while (inFile) //True
{
getline(inFile, inputString); //inFile: True, inputString: thisisatestthisisa
unsigned int tempStringLength = inputString.length(); //18
total += tempStringLength; //18
}
//...
Iteration 2:
//...
while (inFile) //True
{
getline(inFile, inputString); //inFile: True, inputString: thisisa
unsigned int tempStringLength = inputString.length(); //7
total += tempStringLength; //25
}
//...
Iteration 3:
//...
while (inFile) //True
{
getline(inFile, inputString); //inFile: EOF, inputString: thisisa (not modified)
unsigned int tempStringLength = inputString.length(); //7
total += tempStringLength; //32
}
//...
inFile now returns false because the EOF was reached and your loop terminates. Printing 32 as the length.
Long story short: Don't use the file state as a loop terminator. Use the actual read, either getline or operator>> depending on the situation.