ifstream not reading EOF character

First thing is first, you shouldn't check like that. eof() doesn't return true until after a failed read. But you can do better (and easier)!

check the stream state with the implicit conversion to void* which can be used in a bool context. Since most of the read operations on streams return a reference to the stream, you can write some very consice code like this:

std::string line;
while(std::getline(currentfile, line)) {
    // process line
}

Basically what it is doing is saying "while I could successfully extract a line from currentfile, do the following", which is what you really meant to say anyway ;-);

Like I said, this applies to most stream operations, so you can do things like this:

int x;
std::string y;
if(std::cin >> x >> y) {
    // successfully read an integer and a string from cin!
}

EDIT: The way I would rewrite your code is like this:

string line;
unsigned long pos = 0;
int linenumber = 0;

ifstream curfile(input.c_str());

std::cout << "About to try to read the file" << std::endl;
while (std::getline(curfile, line)) {

    std::cout << "Getting line " << linenumber << std::endl;
    linenumber++;

    // do the rest of the work with line
}

Do not do it like that.

EOF is not the only thing you'll encounter while reading. There's a bunch of errors you might get, and so the best is to simply test the stream itself:

while(currentfile)
{
    // read somehow
}

If you're reading lines, then, the simplest way is:

std::string line;
while(std::getline(currentfile, line))
{
    // use line
}

Your first call to getline is triggering one of the fail-bits on the ifstream object. That is why if you do a check for a fail-bit using ios::good(), you never enter your read loop. I would check to see what the value of line is ... it's probably empty, meaning you're having another issue reading your file, like maybe permissions problems, etc.

The problem is here:

if (!curfile.good())
    cout<<"Bad file read"<<endl;   // OK you print bad.
while (!curfile.eof())             // But the loop is still entered.
                                   // Another reason to **NEVER** to use 
                                   // while (file.eof()) // as bad does not mean eof
                                                         // though eof is bad

Try this:

void readFile(std::istream& str)
{   
    std::string     line;
    while(std::getline(str, line))
    {
        std::stringstream   lineStream(line);
        std::string         ignoreWord;
        int                 number[3];

        lineStream >> ignoreWord   // reads one space seporated word
                   >> number[0]    // reads a number
                   >> ignoreWord >> ignoreWord >> ignoreWords  // reads three words 
                   >> number[1]    // reads a number
                   >> number[2];   // reads a number

        current.push_back(number[0]);
        dx.push_back(number[1]);
        dy.push_back(number[2]);
    }   
}

ifstream not reading EOF character

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