Can't read .cso files but I can read their .hlsl versions?

Question

Well I've been trying to read a .cso file to use as a shader for a DirectX program I'm currently making.

Problem is no matter how I implemented a way to read the file it never worked. And after fidgeting around I discover that it's only the .cso files I can't read.

I can read anything else (which means it works) even their .hlsl files. Which is strange because the .hlsl (high level shader language) files are supposed to turn into .cso (compiled shader object) files.

What I'm currently doing is:

vector<byte> Read(string File){
    vector<byte> Text;
    fstream file(File, ios::in | ios::ate | ios::binary);

    if(file.is_open()){
        Text.resize(file.tellg());
        file.seekg(0 , ios::beg);
        file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&Text[0]), Text.size());
        file.close();
    }        

    return Text;
};

If I then implement it.

Read("VertexShader.hlsl"); //Works
Read("VertexShader.cso"); //Doesn't Works?!?!

And I need the .cso version of the shader to draw my sexy triangles. Without it my life and application will never continue and I have no idea what could be wrong.

EDIT #1: When I read the .hlsl file the vector get's filled whit what was written in the file. For the .cso ones the function doesn't even pass the "if(file.is_open)" test and stays empty.

Answer 1

Finally found the problem.

Seems that the .hlsl turns into .cso files automatically for Windows 8 Applications but not for Windows 7 Applications (and others I guess). So my previous attempt to read the .cso file directly wouldn't work since the file never existed to begin with. Though I thought it would since I started to learn DirectX for Windows 8 first.

For windows 7 you have to compile the shader yourself and use that information.

Here's what I did:

#include <d3dcompiler.h>
#pragma comment(lib, "d3dcompiler.lib")

ID3D10Blob *blob, *blob2; //these hold the compiled shader data

D3DCompileFromFile(
    L"VertexShader.hlsl", NULL, NULL, "main", "vs_5_0", 0, 0, &blob, 0);

D3DCompileFromFile(
    L"PixelShader.hlsl", NULL, NULL, "main", "ps_5_0", 0, 0, &blob2, 0);


//Now you can just use the data with blob->GetBufferPointer(); 
//Or it's size with blob->GetBufferSize();


md3device->CreateVertexShader(
    blob->GetBufferPointer(), blob->GetBufferSize(), nullptr, &mVertexShader);

md3devicecontext->VSSetShader(mVertexShader, nullptr, 0);

Hope other people find this useful and helpful.I couldn't find info on this anywhere but found the function syntax on msdn and decided to try it since I had no other lead and it worked. (Hence I came up with the fact that Windows 7 doesn't compile it for you)