Serialization.

[ankitkk]

What is the canonical way to serialize/deserialize CNL types?

Its not entirely clear how to access the underlying data structures from the documentation or construct cnl objects from raw bytes. a concise example would help, similar to existing examples.

What environment are you working in?

gcc 8+

[johnmcfarlane]

Hi.

Thanks for the suggestion. A similar question has been asked before in #401. That answer may help.

Because they are class templates - and not strictly types themselves - it means that ability to serialise depends on the numeric type with which they are specialised. So if you specialise with an easily serialisable type, e.g. int, then you can do as you would normally, e.g. the example from fstream::write

#include <iostream>
 
int main()
{
    int n = 0x41424344;
    std::cout.write(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&n), sizeof n) << '\n';
}

should work just fine with scaled_integer of int:

#include <cnl/all.h>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    cnl::scaled_integer<int, cnl::power<-16>> n = 16706.26275634765625;
    std::cout.write(reinterpret_cast<char*>(&n), sizeof n) << '\n';
}

(example)

But if you use something non-trivial, e.g. a number type containing a pointer to dynamic memory, that's a bad idea!

Action: add serialisation FAQ to front page.

[ankitkk]

Thank you. This helps.

[johnmcfarlane]

You're welcome! Thanks for closing the issue. Ppl often don't. However, in this instance, I'm going to keep it open as a reminder to change the FAQ. After all, you're the second person to ask about it!