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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>More Binary Input and Output</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.73.2" /><meta name="keywords" content="&#10;      ISO C++&#10;    , &#10;      library&#10;    " /><link rel="start" href="../spine.html" title="The GNU C++ Library Documentation" /><link rel="up" href="bk01pt11ch27.html" title="Chapter 27. File Based Streams" /><link rel="prev" href="bk01pt11ch27s02.html" title="Binary Input and Output" /><link rel="next" href="bk01pt11ch28.html" title="Chapter 28. Interacting with C" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">More Binary Input and Output</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="bk01pt11ch27s02.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 27. File Based Streams</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="bk01pt11ch28.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="manual.io.filestreams.binary2"></a>More Binary Input and Output</h2></div></div></div><p>Towards the beginning of February 2001, the subject of
      "binary" I/O was brought up in a couple of places at the
      same time.  One notable place was Usenet, where James Kanze and
      Dietmar Kühl separately posted articles on why attempting
      generic binary I/O was not a good idea.  (Here are copies of
      <a class="ulink" href="binary_iostreams_kanze.txt" target="_top">Kanze's article</a> and
      <a class="ulink" href="binary_iostreams_kuehl.txt" target="_top">Kühl's article</a>.)
   </p><p>Briefly, the problems of byte ordering and type sizes mean that
      the unformatted functions like <code class="code">ostream::put()</code> and
      <code class="code">istream::get()</code> cannot safely be used to communicate
      between arbitrary programs, or across a network, or from one
      invocation of a program to another invocation of the same program
      on a different platform, etc.
   </p><p>The entire Usenet thread is instructive, and took place under the
      subject heading "binary iostreams" on both comp.std.c++
      and comp.lang.c++.moderated in parallel.  Also in that thread,
      Dietmar Kühl mentioned that he had written a pair of stream
      classes that would read and write XDR, which is a good step towards
      a portable binary format.
   </p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="bk01pt11ch27s02.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="bk01pt11ch27.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="bk01pt11ch28.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Binary Input and Output </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../spine.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Chapter 28. Interacting with C</td></tr></table></div></body></html>