On 29 November 2017 at 02:58, Gavin Lambert via Boost-users < boost-users@lists.boost.org> wrote:
On 29/11/2017 01:57, Richard Hodges wrote:
It gives me the shivers. Binary data could easily have a zero in the last byte.
In theory those should be distinguishable -- char is a distinct type from unsigned char (even if char is unsigned by default), and *hopefully* anyone poking binary data at the wire is doing so as an unsigned char or uint8_t.
In reality, in my world (e.g. protocol buffers), std::string is a more useful type for binary data buffers that std::vector<std::uint8_t>. I know it's a different type, but still, it's chars modelling bytes. This is not an uncommon idea. The fact that you can't construct a std::vector from data without a copy means that std::vector<byte> is less suitable for buffering data than one might imagine.
In practice, there might be some trouble with people abusing std::string as if it were std::vector<uint8_t> by pointer casting.
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