Question

I have a python dictionary stored in a file which I need to access from a c++ program. What is the best way of doing this?

Thanks

Answer 1

How to do this depends on the python types you’ve serialised. Basically, python prints something like…

{1: 'one', 2: 'two'}

…so you need code to parse this. The simplest case is a flat map from one simple type to another, say int to int:

int key, value;
char c;

if (s >> c && c == '{')
    while (s >> key)
    {
        if (s >> c && c == ':' && s >> value)
            my_map[key] = value;
        if (s >> c && c != ',')
            break;
    }

You can build on this, adding parsing error messages, supporting embedded containers, string types etc..

You may be able to find some existing implementation – I’m not sure. Anyway, this gives you a very rough idea of what they must do internally.