Re: [boost] Contribution of Binary streams

From: troyer (troyer_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-05-31 06:26:40

"Hoeffner, Detlef" wrote:
> 
> Dear boosters,
> 
> I would like to contribute some classes that form a binary iostream. The
> design of the classes corresponds to that of the standard iostream.
> 
> Each stream can be configured to use network or hostbyteorder. wstring's can
> optionally be streamed direct or in UTF format for JAVA compatability.
> 
> I would like to get feedback form you all.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Detlef

I had designed something similar six years ago to allow
for checkpointing and binary (de)serialization of my classes.
I use it both to store data in a file (using the XDR format
to be platform independent) and for message passing
(as a wrapper to message passing library calls). To allow
for different storage formats I use virtual function calls 
for the functions you cal get....() and have optimized versions
to read arrays. A (very) short overview can be found in my 
article in the Proceedings of ISCOPE '98, published in Lecture 
Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1505. 

No matter how you implement it, I think that using a platform-
independent binary format such as XDR is essential for such
binary streams.

Matthias