Does fstream open have trouble with larger files?
fstream f;
f.open("/usr/share/dict/words");

// why is this returning false?
bool open = f.is_open();

f.open("/usr/share/dict/words", fstream::in);

void open (const char *filename,
        ios_base::openmode mode = ios_base::in | ios_base::out );

f.open("/usr/share/dict/words", ios_base::in);