Dynamic array of structs - c++

Question

I have such piece of code:
typedef struct reader
{
char name[50];
char card_num[50];
char title[100];
}reader_t;
int main()
{
vector<reader> vec;
ifstream input_file("D:\\lab.txt", ios::binary);
reader_t master[1];
input_file.read((char*)&master, sizeof(master));
for (size_t idx = 0; idx < 1; idx++)
{
reader temp;
strcpy(temp.name, master[idx].name);
strcpy(temp.card_num, master[idx].card_num);
strcpy(temp.title, master[idx].title);
vec.push_back(temp);
cout << "Name: " << master[idx].name << endl;
cout << "Card num: " << master[idx].card_num << endl;
cout << "Title: " << master[idx].title<<endl;
}
cout << vec.size();
getchar();
}
What is does: it reads structures from binary file into an array of structures,copies them into vector and displays structure.And yes, I do need to do like this - I need to store structures from file in vector and this is the only working way to do it I could find(if you can tell, how to read structures to vector directly from file - you are welcome).
So,everything works fine, but the problem is that I need to create a function which would be able to do the same, but with dynamic array.I wrote something like this:
void read_structs(int vec_size)
{
ifstream input_file("D:\\lab.txt", ios::binary);
//Here I commented 2 ways how I tried to create a dynamic array of structs
//reader* master = new reader[vec_size];
//reader* master = (reader*)malloc(sizeof(reader) * vec_size);
input_file.read((char*)&master, sizeof(master));
for (size_t idx = 0; idx < vec_size; idx++)
{
reader temp;
strcpy(temp.name, master[idx].name);
strcpy(temp.card_num, master[idx].card_num);
strcpy(temp.title, master[idx].title);
vec.push_back(temp);
cout << "Name: " << master[idx].name << endl;
cout << "Card num: " << master[idx].card_num << endl;
cout << "Title: " << master[idx].title<<endl;
}
}
And that worked fine too unless I tried to run it.VS wasn't higlighting error in my code, it just was throwing an exception right as the moment when the program tried to access master[0].name.

Answer 1

There is absolutely no point in the temp struct. See, the
vec.push_back(temp);
is already using copy constructor, so copy constructor must work and then the set of strcpy is not doing anything different from that, so just go with
vec.push_back(master[0]).
You can't read into vector directly. You do need to read into temporary. So that is correct. Except I suppose you want to read all entries from the file no matter how many of them there are, so you need to put the read itself also into the loop.
There is not much point in creating an array of one element.
reader_t master[1];
input_file.read((char*)master, sizeof(master));
// ^ you *don't* need & here, arrays degrade to pointers automatically
and
reader_t master;
input_file.read((char *)&master, sizeof(master));
// ^ but you do need & here.
are equivalent. I would go with the later.
So we are basically down to:
reader temp; // calling it temp; the master name makes no sense.
while (input_file.read((char*)&temp, sizeof(temp)))
// read returns input_file and input_file is false if last operation failed
{
vec.push_back(temp);
// verify the stored values by reading back vfrom vec.back().
cout << "Name: " << vec.back().name << endl;
cout << "Card num: " << vec.back().card_num << endl;
cout << "Title: " << vec.back().title<<endl;
}
In the second example, you didn't initialize master, so it obviously crashed.
There is a more C++ approach though. First, you define a read operator for the structure:
std::istream &operator>>(std::istream &in, reader &r) {
return in.read((char *)&r, sizeof(r));
}
and then you simply read the vector using the istream_iterator:
vec.assign(std::istream_iterator<reader>(input_file),
std::istream_iterator<reader>());
and the standard library will generate the above loop for you.