unformatted output through operator<<

i want to use streams from std lib to output int, long, __int64, etc...
but i dont want to have them formatted, i want unformatted output. that's no problem useing write(), but if i use operator<<, it get's allways formatted.
is there a flag to direct to unformatted output or do i have to write my own num_put class ??

by the way, are there any facilitys to access files apart from formatted streams included in std lib ?

I'm understanding you mean unformatted as in you want it to output hexidecimal?

>but if i use operator<<, it get's allways formatted.
The << and >> operators are formatted by definition, if you want block input or output, use read and write.

-Prelude

Thank you for your replies. I have allready found out what i needed to know. If someone's interested, here's what I meant:

Code:

---

unsigned long foo = 1234567;
myfilestream myfile;
myfile << foo << " "<< std::hex << foo; // assume myfile to be an open ofstream

---

myfile would now contain

Code:

---

"1234567 0012d687" (I don't know if it uses big endian...)

---

But that is bad, because sometimes you want to write the data like it appears in system memory.
You could write instead:

Code:

---

myfile.write(reinterpret_cast<myfilestream::char_type*>(&foo), sizeof(foo));
/*which produces on big endian machines*/
"‡Ö "

---

But that all wasn't a solution for my problem:

Code:

---

class foo
{
  friend istream& operator >> (istream&, foo&);
  /*...*/
  // data members:
  unsigned long _start;
  unsigned long _end;
};
// assume using namespace std;
istream& operator >> (istream& in, foo& f)
{
  in >> f._start;
  in >> f._end;
  if (f._start > f._end) swap(f._start, f._end);
  return in;
}

class bar
{
  istream& operator >> (istream& in, bar&)
  /*...*/
  // own data
  unsigned long _id;
  foo _location;
}
istream& operator >> (istream& in, bar& b)
{
  in >> b._id;
  in >> f._location; // CALLS operator>>(/*...*/) for _location
  return in;
}

---

foo's operator<< checks for disordered start/end values and swaps them if necessary.
If i had just used

Code:

---

in.read(reinterpret_cast<istream::char_type*>(&bar), sizeof(bar));

---

that check was never performed, because operator >> was never called for _location (which is a foo and has it's own overloaded verson of >>).

But i can't encode my files in ascii, and streams will allways output as ascii, except:
The stream's local's facets num_put/num_get are replaced by your own ones, that just perform a raw memory write.
Those classes perform formattion of numbers. Search your stl / std lib documentation for more information ( header <locale> ).

That's pretty handy for debugging as well because you can switch between ascii and raw representation.