Hello everyone, I got some code that loads a text file into a char* buffer and for the most part, it works! The issue is that it adds some weird extra characters to the end. Here is an example:

In this example above, the text file has the words "WORKS!" and the char buffer allocated is taken from the size of the file which in this case, is new char [6].

Here is the code:

bool DefaultResourceLoader::VLoadResource (std::shared_ptr <ResourceHandle> pResourceHandle)
	{
		std::ifstream loadedFile;
		loadedFile.open(pResourceHandle->GetResourceName());
		loadedFile.read(pResourceHandle->GetWritableResourceBuffer(), pResourceHandle->GetFileSize());
		
		if ( loadedFile.fail() )
		{
			printf("ERROR");
		}
		loadedFile.close();
		return true;
	}

GetResourceName returns the file name as a string. GetWriteableResourceBuffer returns the char* buffer which is of size of the file, in this case, new char[6]. GetFileSize also returns the file size so 6 for this example.

Is there any reason why those characters get printed out? I'm using unicode in my VS2010 settings, and I tried type casting it to char* after, or creating a string for it and printing it. I also tried printf and cout but both result in the same thing.

You need to add a '\0' c-string terminator. make the char buffer 1 bigger, then when you read it, assign the last char in the array a value of 0.

int filesize = whatever;
char *buf = new char[filesize + 1];
read_the_data();
buf[filesize] = 0;

This is needed as a c-string holds a null terminator to signify the end of the string.

Oh awesome, that works! Thanks, but shouldn't a text file which is basically just a really long char have the 0 at the end as well?

As far as i know, a text file is treated similar to binary file except that some os's do some linefeed, carriage return translations. Text files are sometimes parsed by reading line-by-line, which, in c++, is straightforward to do (std::getline()). You have the filesize, you know when you've reached the end of file, and you can read line-by-line if you want. Thinking from a text file point of view, i don't even think '\0' is valid in it (does getline() stop at the '\0'). I guess what i'm trying to say, a text file is basically a binary file except it generally contains printable text rather than some sort of binary data and a '\0' would be considered binary data.

(did i get that right, lol)

EDIT: ninja'd

Oh okay, makes sense. It seems weird that char's need a 0 at the end but I guess thats just implementation. Well, now my Resource Cache works so thanks a lot for the help guys!