Question

I need to save packet state for a while.
So I read the packet data which is represented as unsigned char* and than I create a record with this data and save the record in the list for a while.

Which will be a better way to represent the packet in the record as char* or as char[].

How do i copy the read data ( unsigned char ) to both options :
To unsigned char[] and to unsigned char*

I need to copy the data because each time I read packet it will be readed to the same char*,so when I save it for a while I need to copy data first

Answer 1

If the packet data is binary I’d prefer using std::vector to store the data, as opposed to one of the C strXXX functions, to avoid issues with a potential NULL character existing in the data stream. Most strXXX functions look for NULL characters and truncate their operation. Since the data is not a string, I’d also avoid std::string for this task.

std::vector<unsigned char> v( buf, buf + datalen );

The vector constructor will copy all the data from buf[0] to buf[datalen - 1] and will deallocate the memory when the vector goes out of scope. You can get a pointer to the underlying buffer using v.data() or &v[0].