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Parsing void* data

Started by briandra3 Sep 1, 2005 at 4:16 PM 2 replies 600+ views

Original Post

Sep 1, 2005 at 4:16 PM

Hi, I am trying to read in individual files from a .zip file in c++. Using zlib, I can uncompress the file I want in the zip and get the data into a void* variable. How can I then parse the void* data? I know what type of data should be in the void* variable. I also know how to parse text and binary files using the FILE class. Can I do a similar thing with the void*? Thanks, Brian

Toolmaker

216

Toolmaker

Sep 1, 2005 at 4:26 PM

The void * pointer is basicly an un-typed pointer. You can treat it like as you like. If you want to convert the data to a byte array, you can do so by casting it:
unsigned short *bytes = (unsigned short *)pData;

You can do same with all other data-types, except it might or might not work. If you want to treat it like binary data, it's most commom to use char * for the data.

Toolmaker

briandra3

Author

briandra3

Sep 1, 2005 at 5:06 PM

Thanks for the reply!

Are there any functions that could be used to parse both files and void* buffers? I would like to be able to load data from either a file or a void* buffer, and it would be the best if I could do both using the same routine.

private_ctor

Sep 1, 2005 at 7:49 PM

I'd recommend separate functions. Parsing through void*s can get pretty messy because you have to type-cast it for just about anything you want to do with it.

If you put it all into one function its doable, but if you take the time to write two separate functions one for a FILE* and one for a void* you'll thank me in the long run.

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