[Boost-bugs] [Boost C++ Libraries] #1836: bug in serializing wide character strings

Subject: [Boost-bugs] [Boost C++ Libraries] #1836: bug in serializing wide character strings
From: Boost C++ Libraries (noreply_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-04-17 21:12:21

#1836: bug in serializing wide character strings
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 Reporter:  Jeff Faust <jeff_at_[hidden]>  |       Owner:  ramey        
     Type:  Bugs                              |      Status:  new          
Milestone:  Boost 1.35.1                      |   Component:  serialization
  Version:  Boost 1.34.1                      |    Severity:  Problem      
 Keywords:  wstring wchar_t                   |  
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 We've discovered an issue Boost has writing and reading wide character
 strings (wchar_t* and std::wstrings) to non-wide character file streams
 (std::ifstream and std::ofstream).  The issue stems from the fact that
 wide characters are written and read as a sequence of characters (in
 text_oarchive_impl.ipp and text_iarchive_impl.ipp, respectively).  For
 text streams, an EOF character terminates the reading of a file on
 Windows.
 Some wide characters have EOF (value = 26 decimal) as one of the bytes so
 reading that byte causes early termination of the read.  We have worked
 around the issue by deriving our own input and output archives from
 text_i|oarchive_impl<Archive> and overriding load_override() and
 save_override for std::wstring and wchar_t*.  Our implementation just
 sequences through the wide characters and writes them 1 by 1 as
 wchar_t to the archive.  This isn't very elegant and is even less readable
 in the file than the current implementation but does resolve the problem.

 Although the test test_simple_class does test wstrings, it only uses
 characters 'a'-'z' which does not expose this problem.

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Ticket URL: <http://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/1836>
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