Question

Currently I am facing an issue where i am passing a buffer object over a pipe from x64 arch to x86 arch. The object also contains some pointer values, which is 8 bytes in x64 which the same pointer size on x86 is 4 bytes. Now when i am transmitting the object over pipe then size of it is bit more than what x86 platform was expecting for the same object (because pointer size in here is less). What i could understood from similar post in this forum that i might need to use serialization but i do not know how as i have never used serialization before. Will serialization will solve this problem? I am using C++ with GCC compiler. I want the product would work on all arch (ia64, x64 or x86).

Answer 1

boost serialization is designed specifically to :

Here, we use the term “serialization” to mean the reversible
deconstruction of an arbitrary set of C++ data structures to a
sequence of bytes. Such a system can be used to reconstitute an
equivalent structure in another program context. Depending on the
context, this might used implement object persistence, remote
parameter passing or other facility. In this system we use the term
“archive” to refer to a specific rendering of this stream of bytes.
This could be a file of binary data, text data, XML, or some other
created by the user of this library.

By the way, use POD structures, and make sure to have use data types of a specific type. For that use predefined types (for example, take a look here)