reading a file as binary

[trials]

Has anyone got any information on how to read a file as binary. This is for a few programs im making one is to split a file into several parts and the other is to send files over winsock, any information would be great
thanx trials

[MemorY]

Reading and Writing files in Binary

[Limpster]

If you use visual basic you can use

Open "filename" for binary as #n

Then you can use Get to read the binary

[cleanbash]

with c++ it's something like this:

// open a file in "read binary" mode

filePtr = fopen(filename, "rb");

[IceStorm]

Actually, that is more C file I/O then C++. C++ does support C I/O, so you may see that in a C++ program, but more then likely you will not.

C++ would use the ifstream (for reading in a file) and ofstream (for writing out a file) classes for file I/O.

ifstream in(“filename”, ios::binary|ios::nocreate);
ofstream out(“filename”, ios::binary);


Here is an example of some code that uses binary I/O to copy a file entered on the command line. More error handling could be added but you get the idea.

//-----------------HEADERS---------------
#include<iostream.h>
#include<fstream.h>

//----------------PROTOTYPES---------------
int binaryCopy(char *source, char *destination);
void usage();


//---------------DRIVER---------------------
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	cout<<"Starting bincp...."<<endl;
	if(argc != 3)
	{usage();return 1;}
	
	if(!binaryCopy(argv[1],argv[2]))
		cout<<"Error in file argument."<<endl;
	else
		cout<<"bincp sucessful."<<endl;
	
	return 0;
}


//----------------FUNCTIONS---------------------
int binaryCopy(char *source, char *destination)
{
	//create I/O streams
	ifstream in(source, ios::binary|ios::nocreate);
	ofstream out(destination, ios::binary);

	//if file fails, die and return 0/false
	if(!in||!out) return 0;
	
	char byte = 0;

	//do until EOF
	while(in)
	{
		in.read(&byte,1);
		out.write(&byte,1);
	}

	return 1;
}

void usage()
{
	cout<<"bincp <sourceFile> <destinationFile>"<<endl;
}