Hello! I have my own custom binary model format and I am trying to read it using ifstream, but ran into a problem. I have a class called NXNode which contains the name of each scene node. The problem is that the name's size varies. How would I read the string correctly when I don't know it's size? I know BinaryReader.ReadString() does it without me specifying the size, so it must be possible with C++ too right? Thanks!

[EDIT: Here's some code if it helps]

NXNode::NXNode(ifstream* reader, NXNode* parent) : NXNode()
{
	if (parent != NULL)
		Parent = parent;
	
	reader->read((char*) &Name, sizeof(string));
	reader->read((char*)&HasChildren, sizeof(bool));
	reader->read((char*)&MeshCount, sizeof(short));
	reader->read((char*)&ChildCount, sizeof(short));
	
	float nums[16];
	for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++)
	{
		reader->read((char*) &nums[i], sizeof(float));
	}

	if (HasChildren)
	{
		Children = new NXNode[ChildCount];
		for (int i = 0; i < ChildCount; i++)
		{
			Children[i] = NXNode(reader, this);
		}
	}
}

Hello! So I now the length for each string in my file. In this case, the length is 7 (box.obj). Here's how it's setup now:

int nameLength;
reader->read((char*) &nameLength, sizeof(int));
reader->read((char*) &Name, sizeof(nameLength));

But now, it won't read. My app crashes. Am I doing that the write way? Thanks! :)

Note that depending on the type of Name, reading and writing using &Name could be very bad ju-ju.