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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Posts
    166

    Can I serialize floats over a TCP/IP link with stringstream?

    Greetings,

    Can you use stringstreams to serialize say floats over a tcp/ip link? will this work?

    sender:
    Code:
    ostringstream oss;
    float f1 = 3.2134f;
    float f2 = 0.1123f;
    oss << setw(5) << setprecision(4) << f1 << "  " << f2;
    ...
    tcpConnection->Send(oss.str().c_str(), oss.str().size());
    ...
    receiver:
    Code:
    ...
    string message = tcpConnection->Receive();
    ...
    istringstream iss(message);
    iss >> f1 >> f2;
    Last edited by ekhule; December 13th, 2011 at 09:39 AM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Holland (land of the dope)
    Posts
    4,123

    Re: Can I serialize floats over a TCP/IP link with stringstream?

    will this work?
    Have you already tried it ?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    France
    Posts
    2,513

    Re: Can I serialize floats over a TCP/IP link with stringstream?

    Quote Originally Posted by ekhule View Post
    Greetings,

    Can you use stringstreams to serialize say floats over a tcp/ip link? will this work?

    sender:
    Code:
    ostringstream oss;
    float f1 = 3.2134f;
    float f2 = 0.1123f;
    oss << setw(5) << setprecision(4) << f1 << "  " << f2;
    ...
    tcpConnection->Send(oss.str().c_str(), oss.str().size());
    ...
    receiver:
    Code:
    ...
    string message = tcpConnection->Receive();
    ...
    istringstream iss(message);
    iss >> f1 >> f2;
    It might be a little sub-efficient, but it is portable and "works". You'll lose some of the precision with that setup though.

    A float has approximatly 23 bits of binary precision, which is roughly equivalent to 7 decimal digits. A double is precise up to about 16 decimals.

    I'd use "setprecision(20)".
    Is your question related to IO?
    Read this C++ FAQ article at parashift by Marshall Cline. In particular points 1-6.
    It will explain how to correctly deal with IO, how to validate input, and why you shouldn't count on "while(!in.eof())". And it always makes for excellent reading.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    1,689

    Re: Can I serialize floats over a TCP/IP link with stringstream?

    Sure, that should work. If you are talking with servers, it is more common to use a standard serialization scheme like xml, json, yaml, imap, but for simple things that don't need to be portable to other systems, that will work just fine.

    Will tcpConnection->Receive() return a string or binary? I only ask because you do not send the null terminator of the c_str. If it simply dumps out the raw data exactly how it goes in, then you will cause corruption, so send size() + 1 bytes, otherwise, it's fine.

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