Re: [Boost-users] Is there a something in boost to facilitate binary buffer transformations into typed data structures/classes?

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 7:17 AM, Roman Perepelitsa wrote:

Scott McMurray writes:

...

std::copy( binary_buffer.begin(), binary_buffer.end(), reinterpret_cast(&dr) );

Or: memcpy(&dr, &buffer[0], buffer.size());

Though a good implementation will have implemented std::copy for bytes with memcpy.

Or use union to avoid making a copy:

union { data d; unsigned char bytes[4]; } u;

bytes[0] = 3; bytes[1] = 6; bytes[2] = 0; bytes[3] = 9;

// use d.first, d.second, d.third

If your compiler allows that as an extension. (GCC does, dunno about others.) It's officially not allowed, last I checked.