Crash while reading a File in C++

Question

I want to search a particular word in a file & return a result as to whether that word exists in the file or not. I have created a function which does this. But while returning the program is crashing. Here is the code:

bool FindMyWord(const char *fileName)
{
    ifstream myFile (fileName);
    if(!myFile)
        return false;

    string wordSearch = "MyWord";
    string endSearch = "LastWord";
    bool result;
    while(1)
    {
        char read[20];
        myFile.getline(read, 1000, '
');
        string line(read, read+20);
        if(line.find(wordSearch) != string::npos)
        {
            result = true;
            break; //comes here after looping about 10 times
        }
        if(line.find(endSearch) != string::npos)
        {
            result = false;
            break;
        }
    }
    myFile.close();
    return result;
} // <- crash when F10 is pressed after this

In VS2010 while debugging I find that the crash is happening after executing "return result;" in second last line of the function i.e. when the yellow cursor is for the last closing bracket of function. I am getting a message

A buffer overrun has occurred in myApp.exe which has corrupted the program's internal
state. Press Break to debug the program or Continue to terminate the program.

What is this error? I am calling the function like this :

bool result = FindMyWord("myFileName.stp");

UPDATE: Each line has varying no of characters & they are > 20. I want to read the 1st 20 characters & if the word does not exist in those characters then I want to jump to the next line. Initially I had used myFile.getline(read, 20, ' '); But after the 1st loop every subsequent looping resulted in NULL being passed to read. So I made it to read 1000 because before reading 1000 chars it would find ' ' & go to next line. A better mechanism of achieving the same would be very helpful.

Answer 1

Why not use a std::string instead of a fixed length buffer?

bool FindMyWord(const char *fileName)
{
    std::ifstream myFile (fileName);
    if(!myFile) {
        return false;
    }

    std::string wordSearch = "MyWord";
    std::string endSearch = "LastWord";
    bool result;
    std::string line;
    while(std::getline(myFile, line))
    {
        if(line.find(wordSearch) != std::string::npos)
        {
            result = true;
            break; //comes here after looping about 10 times
        }
        if(line.find(endSearch) != std::string::npos)
        {
            result = false;
            break;
        }
    }
    myFile.close();
    return result;
} 

Buffer overflows have been responsible for far too many security problems. Just don't use fixed length buffers!

This is also slightly more correct, as it checks for errors on the stream.

PS I hate using namespace std!