Writing structs to a file
Author
Hello,
I am trying to save a struct containing character arrays (char string[16], not char *string) to a file. I have done much research and turned up nothing concerning a way to do this. All I've managed is saving structs containing numbers. If it's even possible to do it, how could I go about this? Thank you!
Are you using the C or C++ standard library routines? And what have you tried to write structs with numbers out to a file? Functions like fwrite() or std::basic_ostream::write() do the trick for me.
Well, if you want to just save the data in a binary format, you can use fwrite() to write out all the struct data to the file. If you want to be able to open the file up and be able to see human-readable characters, you should write the data line-by-line or however else using something like fputs().
To write the entire structure to a binary file, you can do something like this:
-noix-
To write the entire structure to a binary file, you can do something like this:
// Little player structstruct player_t{ char name[32]; int life;};int WriteStructToFile(player_t *ch, const char *filename){ FILE *fp = fopen(filename, "wb"); if(fp) { fwrite(ch, sizeof(player_t), 1, fp); fclose(fp); return 1; } else return 0;}-noix-
Everything is possible my man. It's just you'll have to do it manually that's all.
If you directly write that structure to a file it will write the value of string (a memory address) instead of what is stored within that address since it is a memory pointer (Yes char* & char [] are for sake of argument exactly the same thing).
If you want to store that structure you are going to have to do it manually. make some export & input function that's all, instead of just expecting to dump the contents of memory that store that structure & expect it to work. You've failed to mention weather you're using c or c++ although many connect the term struct with C & class with C++ (although both serve the same purpose in C++, just different default access).
But either way the theory is the same:
Just write the string out as you would normal text to a file & do the same for each member in the structure. Make sure you keep the same order on load. Erm, to be short.. just write it to file one thing @ a time. Can't see what trouble or confusion you could have with that. Looks like you've just jumped ahead too fast that's all. Your brain just needs to learn some more code concept. You'll cram it all in there in the end.
Seek & you shall find knowledge & understanding
///
Edit: wow 2 people posted before me, gettin slow n old :(
//
If you directly write that structure to a file it will write the value of string (a memory address) instead of what is stored within that address since it is a memory pointer (Yes char* & char [] are for sake of argument exactly the same thing).
If you want to store that structure you are going to have to do it manually. make some export & input function that's all, instead of just expecting to dump the contents of memory that store that structure & expect it to work. You've failed to mention weather you're using c or c++ although many connect the term struct with C & class with C++ (although both serve the same purpose in C++, just different default access).
But either way the theory is the same:
Just write the string out as you would normal text to a file & do the same for each member in the structure. Make sure you keep the same order on load. Erm, to be short.. just write it to file one thing @ a time. Can't see what trouble or confusion you could have with that. Looks like you've just jumped ahead too fast that's all. Your brain just needs to learn some more code concept. You'll cram it all in there in the end.
Seek & you shall find knowledge & understanding
///
Edit: wow 2 people posted before me, gettin slow n old :(
//
Quote:Original post by ProPuke
Yes char* & char [] are for sake of argument exactly the same thing
This is actually not true for strings within structures. Try this to test your hypothesis:
typedef struct { char Cool[32]; int SomeStuff;} Test1;typedef struct { char BestEver[1024]; int SomeStuff;} Test2;cout << "Size 1 is " << sizeof(Test1) << "Size 2 is " << sizeof(Test2) << endl;If your hypothesis is correct, then Test1 and Test2 would be the same size. In my experience, this has never been the case ;~).
I wrote up a quick test just to make sure I didn't forget something. It worked fine:
And as Apocryphiliac said, char* and char[] are not the same in this context. The former stores only a single (typically 4-byte) pointer. It may point to memory elsewhere, but if you try to write the struct out to a file using fwrite() or ostream::write(), you're only going to write the pointer values out to memory, not what they point to. This is not the desired behavior in almost all cases. However, with char[], the character array is stored literally in the struct, there is no pointer involved at all in this context, so the bytes get written out just as you would expect.
#include <cstdio>struct s{ char a[16]; char b[16];};int main(){ s v; strcpy(v.a, "0123456789ABCDE"); strcpy(v.b, "~!@#$%^&*()_+|"); FILE* pFile = fopen("Test.dat", "wb"); fwrite(&v, sizeof(v), 1, pFile); fclose(pFile); return 0;}And as Apocryphiliac said, char* and char[] are not the same in this context. The former stores only a single (typically 4-byte) pointer. It may point to memory elsewhere, but if you try to write the struct out to a file using fwrite() or ostream::write(), you're only going to write the pointer values out to memory, not what they point to. This is not the desired behavior in almost all cases. However, with char[], the character array is stored literally in the struct, there is no pointer involved at all in this context, so the bytes get written out just as you would expect.
Bah I knew people would complain if I said that :(
I only said "for sake or argument" although I realize I probally shouldn't of said that @ all. Since it's an array it will be allocated in the structure, & will be dereferenced by default; But ergh.. I forget what my point was. Hmm.. nope it's gone sorry
I only said "for sake or argument" although I realize I probally shouldn't of said that @ all. Since it's an array it will be allocated in the structure, & will be dereferenced by default; But ergh.. I forget what my point was. Hmm.. nope it's gone sorry
Quote:Original post by ProPuke
... good stuff ...
To expand on this, it is a good idea to write how many bytes long the array is in the file. This way, you can reserve a buffer long enough to hold the data before you read it in. This can prevent some buffer overrun errors as long as you adhere to that length.
struct PERSON { int age; char *name;}int write_struct(FILE *file, struct PERSON *person){ int length; ASSERT(file != NULL); ASSERT(person != NULL); ASSERT(person->name != NULL); fwrite(&person->age, sizeof(person->age), 1, file); /* here i'm calculating the total number of bytes * occupied by the string. i'm not counting on * the size of each character in the string being * one byte. */ length = strlen(person->name) * sizeof(char); /* we write the size in bytes of the string, not * the number of characters. this will help prevent * buffer overruns when you read the file in later */ fwrite(length, sizeof(length), 1, file); fwrite(person->name, 1, length, file); return 0;}int read_struct(FILE *file, struct PERSON *person){ int length; ASSERT(file != NULL); ASSERT(person != NULL); fread(&person->age, sizeof(person->age), 1, file); /* read the number of bytes to allocate. when we * wrote the value originally, we calculated byte * length, not number of characters. */ fread(&length, sizeof(length), 1, file); person->name = malloc(length); fread(person->name, 1, length, file); return 0;}Quote:Original post by smrQuote:Original post by ProPuke
... good stuff ...
To expand on this...
Ahh yes i often say that... No wait.. I didn't say that. Huh? wha.. *explodes*
Quote:Original post by ProPukeQuote:Original post by smrQuote:Original post by ProPuke
... good stuff ...
To expand on this...
Ahh yes i often say that... No wait.. I didn't say that. Huh? wha.. *explodes*
You're making my brain hurt!
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