Question

I need to know how Boost::Serialize works with STL containers – such as map, vector and list.

Specifically, does it saves the size of the entire container right before all the actual container data itself?

Can I read that size in order to know how large the STL container is?

I am on Win7, 64bit with Visual Studio 2010.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here is the source code for boost serializing std::vectors: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_38_0/boost/serialization/vector.hpp

std::sets: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_38_0/boost/serialization/set.hpp

std::lists: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_38_0/boost/serialization/list.hpp

std::vector is pretty clear that it does. If you look in the http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_38_0/boost/serialization/collections_load_imp.hpp implementation header file we see:

collection_size_type count;
//...
ar >> BOOST_SERIALIZATION_NVP(count);

in the load_collection function. Both std::list and std::set serializer calls this directly.