Thread: Overloading fstream's << and >> operators

  1. #1
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Overloading fstream's << and >> operators

    The extraction and insertion operators for fstream only read/write from/to disk in human readable text form. I would like to override them so that when I set the flag to binary, the operators would work like a binary read or write would. I realize for structures I would use read and write, but to simply write single values read and write are a pain in the arse.

    How would I go about overloading << and >> relative to fstream binary mode? My guess is I probably need to derive from fstream and use basic_streambuf's protected buffer function members to extract/insert the data in binary mode?

    Any help would be appreciated.

  2. #2
    The larch
    Join Date
    May 2006
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    No, it is much simpler. There are plenty of examples on the Web, if you google for operator overloading.

    Basically you need two non-member functions (declared friends, if the class data is otherwise inaccessible).

    The prototypes are
    Code:
    std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream& os, const MyClass&);
    std::istream& operator >> (std::istream& is, MyClass&);

  3. #3
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Yep. Just found the info on the web. Seems straightforward enough.

    Thanks.

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