Structures, fread(), sizeof()

Hello everyone,

I am currently revising for a paper based C++ examination, which is tomorrow. I've come across a question which asks to write a program that will read data into a structure from an external file 'using a single statement'.

Would i be able to use fread() passing in the pointer to the structure, the size of the entire structure using sizeof() and passing in the pointer of the file to be read from - all in one statement.

or would i have to iterate through each element of the structure separately, the structure contains elements of different sizes in memory, eg. int - 4bytes and long - 8 bytes.

Any input would be great thanks

fread() takes a void pointer. So the procedure to do this would be to allocate enough space and then call fread() once.
After you read the data you can cast the structure over it and get the values inside the struct.

the structure has already been constructed, so can i not just read the data in and point it to the already created(but empty) structure, with say 6 members? making sure i don't overflow using sizeof(my structure).

Yes, if its preallocated, this should work, too.

This is discouraged practice. You should overload a stream operator (>> or <<) for your struct, in which you write and read your members individually.
Then you can simply do

mystruct s;
file >> s;

This will ensure portability, as well as avoiding (possible) undefined behavior (especially with classes).