reading and writing more than just chars to fstreams

This is a common question for a noob I guess, but I don't seem to be able to find the answer anywhere.

The question is:

I wish to write a fixed sequence of ints, floats, strings etc. etc. to file and then read them back; what is the most effecient method?

I used to do something like:

Code:

   ofstream file("file.fil", ios::out | ios::binary | ios::ate);
   int i = 5;
   float f = 5.6;
   string s = "Dogs like cats";

   file.write(&i, sizeof(int));
   file.write(&f, sizeof(f));
   file.write(&s, sizeof(string));

   file.close();

And it worked.

When returning to my code in dev-cpp however, that use of the write function was not supported, indeed it only showed me one use of the write() function:

Code:

write(const char *, unsigned int);
(or something very close).

No problem thought I, I simply use:

Code:

   ofstream file("file.fil", ios::out | ios::binary | ios::ate);
   int i = 5;
   float f = 5.6;
   string s = "Dogs like cats";

   file.write(reinterpret_cast<const char *>(&i), sizeof(int));
   file.write(reinterpret_cast<const char *>(&f), sizeof(f));
   file.write(reinterpret_cast<const char *>(&s), sizeof(string));

   file.close();

And yes, it works fine.

My question is however:
-------------------------------
Is there a better or more correct way to do this? Is this method ok? (I have neverseen the reinterpret_cast method I have used documented anywhere)

Thanks in anticipation

dt

Code:

string s = "Dogs like cats";

...

file.write(&s, sizeof(string));

That is wrong. The size of a string object is fixed (as reported by the sizeof operator), regardless of whether you are storing 10 characters or 100 characters it will always be the same. The internal workings of the object keep track of the characters belonging to the string using dynamic memory allocation.

If you wanted to write and read a string object to a file you would have to treat it as a character array and since these are variable length objects you would first need to write the length to the file followed by the appropriate number of characters. On reading the data from the file you would first read the size/length of the characters that follow, then dynamically allocate a buffer of an appropriate size and read the characters into this buffer. You could then convert the data in that buffer back into a string object.

Your use of reinterpret_cast for the float and int variables is correct.

Originally Posted by DominicTrix

My question is however:
-------------------------------
Is there a better or more correct way to do this? Is this method ok? (I have neverseen the reinterpret_cast method I have used documented anywhere)

Thanks in anticipation

dt

you could always take the easy way out:

Code:

#include<fstream>

int main()
{
        double pi=3.14159;
        int i=32000;
        char*hi="hello";
        std::ofstream ofile("test",std::ios::trunc);

        ofile<<pi<<i<<hi;
        return 0;
}

and you end up with:

Code:

3.14159
32000
hello

and reading it in is pretty much the same way...

Sry for no reply, been busy. Thanks guys