Binary Output Files
Streams were originally designed for text, so the default output mode is text. In text mode, the line feed (newline) character expands to a carriage return-line feed pair. The expansion can cause problems, as shown here:
// binary_output_files.cpp
// compile with: /EHsc
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int iarray[2] = { 99, 10 };
int main( )
{
ofstream os( "test.dat" );
os.write( (char *) iarray, sizeof( iarray ) );
}
You might expect this program to output the byte sequence { 99, 0, 10, 0 }; instead, it outputs { 99, 0, 13, 10, 0 }, which causes problems for a program expecting binary input. If you need true binary output, in which characters are written untranslated, you could specify binary output by using the ofstream constructor openmode argument:
// binary_output_files2.cpp
// compile with: /EHsc
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int iarray[2] = { 99, 10 };
int main()
{
ofstream ofs ( "test.dat", ios_base::binary );
// Exactly 8 bytes written
ofs.write( (char*)&iarray[0], sizeof(int)*2 );
}