[Boost-users] Re: [serialization] Problem serializing uninitializedbools

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-04 23:07:16

Obviously this wouldn't be too hard to "fix".  There are two opposite views
on handling undefined situations.  One is to treat them as indications that
the programmer overlooked something and trap them as soon as possible, while
the other is do what the programmer most likely intends.  My personal view
is the former.  Hence, I would prefer to trap such a situation as an error.

Robert Ramey

Andrew B wrote:
> Let me first say "thanks" to everyone involved in Boost, particularly
> the serialization library. I am continuously impressed with the
> quality of this project.
>
> That said, I think I've encountered an issue that I would label as a
> bug, but perhaps there's something I'm missing.
>
> The following code throws/fails in Visual C++ 7.1 debug build.
>
> void boolTest()
> {
>        bool uninitializedBool1, uninitializedBool2;
>        std::ofstream ofs( "booltest.txt" );
>        boost::archive::text_oarchive oa( ofs,
>        boost::archive::no_header ); oa << uninitializedBool1;
>        oa << uninitializedBool2;
>        ofs.close();
>
>        std::ifstream ifs( "booltest.txt" );
>        boost::archive::text_iarchive ia( ifs,
>        boost::archive::no_header ); ia >> uninitializedBool1;
>        ia >> uninitializedBool2;
>        ifs.close();
> }
>
> The reason is clear if you look at the contents of booltest.txt:
> 204 204
>
> Since those bools are uninitialized, VC has written its standard
> "garbage" to their contents, which gets serialized as a value other
> than 0 or 1, which is what what the text_iarchive / ifstream would
> expect to see. I'm not sure if there's a philosophical opposition to
> supporting serializing uninitialized data, but the other primitives
> seem to work, and in my experience, it's not unusual to not initialize
> ever member of a struct before needing to serialize it.
>
> Thanks for your time,
> Andrew