Parsing through data...

[polus]

I have a buffer from an RS232 component that will be full of strings and 2 - 4 Byte numbers. Whats the best way to parse through this data, I was going to check that the data is valid (255 bytes of it) and have a pointer to the buffer which I will increment as I go checking the values and feeding them into a structure.... But Im not sure if Im heading for the best technique?

Does anyone know of a good way of doing this or perhaps a good article on something similar?

Thanks in advance for any tips ;)

[stober]

depends on the structure and how the sender put the package together. Is the buffer you received a complete immage of the structure? If yes, and the structure does not contain any c++ class objects (like std::string) then just memcpy the buffer into the structure.

[polus]

The buffer is a complete image once all the data has been collected but I also need to verify this. The only types that are in the packet are bool, int and float and a few strings (no objects).

Im not exactly sure how Im going to tell the difference between many packets coming in and when they start / end.... They have a start and end charateur and the packets a fixed length so shouldnt be difficult.

Thanks Stober.

[stober]

Another problem you might encounter is Endian order (http://www.cs.umass.edu/~verts/cs32/endian.html) if the data is transferred from one type of computer to another, such as between MS-Windows and IBM AIX unix.

[naddad]

Yes, before memcpy'ing make sure byte ordering in the stream allows you to.

[polus]

Both sides are little endian.

Thanks people.