use a stringstream instead of a file stream. #include <sstream> // or maybe #include <stringstream> - I forget. Robert Ramey "Anil Krishna" <akrishna876@gmail.com> wrote in message news:d27926bf0608041513i6049b7cas247dd30d70d40601@mail.gmail.com... Hi All, Currently I am using the boost serialization library to serialize and the following structure: typedef list<int> testList; typedef testList::iterator lIter; typedef map<int, testList> testMap; typedef testMap::iterator tIter; testMap _tMap; template<class Archive> void serialize(Archive &ar, const unsigned int version) { ar & _tMap; } int main() { test_map tm; ofstream ofs("map_details.txt"); tm.fillMap(); //tm.display(); boost::archive::binary_oarchive oa(ofs); oa << (const test_map)tm; ofs.close(); test_map newTm; ifstream ifs("map_details.txt", std::ios::binary); boost::archive::binary_iarchive ia(ifs); ia >> newTm; ifs.close(); newTm.display(); } In the above code, I am saving the map to a binary file and retrieving it from the file. Instead of that I would want to serialize the data into a char buffer and restore it from the buffer. This is useful for message communication, where I would like to send the map as a message from one process to another using socket communications. Can you any one let me know, how this can be done in boost? Regards, Anil ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users