Re: Should I be using MFC-specific or general C++ file functions?

The straight << and >> operators will not properly serialize an MFC object because they
have no overloads for those objects. There *are* overloads for CArchive source or sink,
and there is additional support in MFC for obtaining values of MFC objects.

So if you write
    CWnd * mywindow;
    ...
    cout << mywindow;
there is no overload for an ostream. You would have to write one on your own. But if you
have
    CArchive ar;
    ....
    ar << mywindow;
then there presumably IS an overload that knows how to serialize a CObject-derived class.

If you don't write your own handlers to mimic the MFC handlers, then you can't serialize
MFC objects to ostreams or from istreams. These are already written for you as part of
MFC.

Since I wouldn't use any of these for any reason, the issue has never arisen for me.
                        joe