counting the number of lines in a text file

Your hack of decrementing the count at the end is exactly that — a hack.

Far better to write your loop correctly in the first place, so it doesn’t count the last line twice.

int main() { 
    int number_of_lines = 0;
    std::string line;
    std::ifstream myfile("textexample.txt");

    while (std::getline(myfile, line))
        ++number_of_lines;
    std::cout << "Number of lines in text file: " << number_of_lines;
    return 0;
}

Personally, I think in this case, C-style code is perfectly acceptable:

int main() {
    unsigned int number_of_lines = 0;
    FILE *infile = fopen("textexample.txt", "r");
    int ch;

    while (EOF != (ch=getc(infile)))
        if ('\n' == ch)
            ++number_of_lines;
    printf("%u\n", number_of_lines);
    return 0;
}

Edit: Of course, C++ will also let you do something a bit similar:

int main() {
    std::ifstream myfile("textexample.txt");

    // new lines will be skipped unless we stop it from happening:    
    myfile.unsetf(std::ios_base::skipws);

    // count the newlines with an algorithm specialized for counting:
    unsigned line_count = std::count(
        std::istream_iterator<char>(myfile),
        std::istream_iterator<char>(), 
        '\n');

    std::cout << "Lines: " << line_count << "\n";
    return 0;
}