Question

I’m currently working on a small C++ project where I use a client-server model someone else built. Data gets sent over the network and in my opinion it’s in the wrong order. However, that’s not something I can change.

Example data stream (simplified):

0x20 0x00 (C++: short with value 32)
0x10 0x35 (C++: short with value 13584)
0x61 0x62 0x63 0x00 (char*: abc)
0x01 (bool: true)
0x00 (bool: false)

I can represent this specific stream as :

struct test {
    short sh1;
    short sh2;
    char abc[4];
    bool bool1;
    bool bool2;
}

And I can typecast it with test *t = (test*)stream; However, the char* has a variable length. It is, however, always null terminated.

I understand that there’s no way of actually casting the stream to a struct, but I was wondering whether there would be a better way than struct test() { test(char* data) { ... }} (convert it via the constructor)

Answer 1

Just add a member function that takes in the character buffer(function input parameter char *) and populates the test structure by parsing it.
This makes it more clear and readable as well.

If you provide a implicit conversion constructor then you create a menace which will do the conversion when you least expect it.