c++ compress with libzpaq to char* buffer - c++

Question

I have a std::vector<short> and would like to compress (and later decompress) with the libzpaq from https://github.com/zpaq/zpaq/ to something like char* buffer.
However I don't get the concept of this Reader and Writer class mentioned in the header file. How do I put my std::vector in to get a compressed buffer out?
Currently I have something like the following code.
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "libzpaq.h"
struct writer: public libzpaq::Writer {
void put(int c) {
}
};
struct reader: public libzpaq::Reader {
int get() {
}
};
void libzpaq::error(const char* msg) {
fprintf(stderr, "Oops: %s\n", msg);
exit(1);
}
int main() {
short a[] = {2,5,8,2,4,2,2,2,6,5,4,3,4,2,2};
std::vector<short> v(a, a+15);
char* buffer;
reader in;
writer out;
libzpaq::compress(&in, &out, "5");
}
And I wan't to compress the vector v into buffer. (And later decompress it again.)
But I don't understand the concept of the Reader and Writer struct/class.
The docu (http://mattmahoney.net/dc/libzpaq.3.html) also mentions the functions virtual int read(char* buf, int n) and virtual void write(const char* buf, int n) for the Reader and Writer. How can I cast a std::vector<short> to char* buf end get the length in n bytes of this buf?
Edit 1: I found a class StringBuffer in libzpaq.h line 1376. But something like
buffer = reinterpret_cast<char*> (&v[0]);
length = sizeof(short)*v.size();
libzpaq::StringBuffer inString, outString;
inString.read(buffer, length);
libzpaq::compress(&inString, &outString, "5");
std::cout << "size outstring: " << outString.size() << std::endl;
std::cout << "size instring: " << inString.size() << std::endl;
always gives me
size outstring: 0
size instring: 0
Even if I try it with a much larger vector v of some thousend random elements.

Answer 1

With Reader you provide byte by byte access to the data you want to compress. So with std::vector<short> it would look like this.
struct reader : public libzpaq::Reader {
reader(const std::vector<short>& v) :
m_v(v),
m_offset(0) {
}
int get() {
if (m_offset < m_v.size() * sizeof (short)) {
return *((char*) m_v.data() + m_offset++);
} else {
return -1;
}
}
int m_offset;
std::vector<short> m_v;
};
Writer should collect output data of the Reader. If you want to collect it in char array I could recommend to do it like this.
struct writer : public libzpaq::Writer {
void put(int c) {
m_buffer.push_back(c);
}
int size() {
m_buffer.size();
}
void copy_to(char* dst) {
memcpy(dst, m_buffer.data(), m_buffer.size());
}
std::vector<char> m_buffer;
};
Then call it:
writer w;
reader r(v1);
libzpaq::compress(&r, &w, "5");
char* buffer = new char[w.size()];
w.copy_to(buffer);
If you want to use StringBuffer then you should write some data to buffer, before read, that why it returns 0. Look at example:
char* buffer = reinterpret_cast<char*> (&v[0]);
int length = sizeof (short)*v.size();
libzpaq::StringBuffer in, out1, out2;
// fill buffer with source data
in.write(buffer, length);
// compress to out1
libzpaq::compress(&in, &out1, "5");
// decompress out1 to out2
libzpaq::decompress(&out1, &out2);
// check result
short* b = (short*)out2.data();
for(int i = 0; i < 15; ++i) {
std::cout << b[i] << std::endl;
}