Byte I/O

[Brian]

I'm trying to read a binary file, but the read() function in fstream takes
char*. What I really want are unsigned chars. How can I do this?

Thanks,

--Brian

[Rolf Magnus]

Brian wrote:

I'm trying to read a binary file, but the read() function in fstream
takes char*. What I really want are unsigned chars. How can I do
this?

fstream is just a typedef for basic_fstream<char>, i.e. a char based
stream. Read() takes a pointer to the stream's template argument type.
So if you create your file as basic_fstream<unsigned char>, read() will
take an unsigned char*.

[Micah Cowan]

Rolf Magnus <ra******@t-online.de> writes:

Brian wrote:

I'm trying to read a binary file, but the read() function in fstream
takes char*. What I really want are unsigned chars. How can I do
this?

fstream is just a typedef for basic_fstream<char>, i.e. a char based
stream. Read() takes a pointer to the stream's template argument type.
So if you create your file as basic_fstream<unsigned char>, read() will
take an unsigned char*.

AIUI, you would then also have to define a specialization of
char_traits<> for unsigned char, as that is not defined by the Standard.

Another common practice seems to be to use
reinterpret_cast<char *>() on a pointer into a buffer of unsigned
char.

--
Micah J. Cowan
mi***@cowan.name