From: Hervé Brönnimann (hervebronnimann_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-12-04 04:59:17
I'd like to go back to Chuck's original posting:
> Inspection of the code reveals the following is happening (both in
> 1.34 and HEAD):
> text_iarchive_impl<Archive>::load(std::string &s)
> {
> std::size_t size;
> * this->This() >> size;
> // skip separating space
> is.get();
> // borland de-allocator fixup
> #if BOOST_WORKAROUND(_RWSTD_VER, BOOST_TESTED_AT(20101))
> if(NULL != s.data())
> #endif
> s.resize(size);
> is.read(const_cast<char *>(s.data()), size); // <== This looks
> suspect
> }
Inspection of the g++ string implementation (latest 4.1.x) shows that
resize() will *almost* always create a new rep and thus a new data()
for the string, if it is shared. The only exception is when the
requested size == s.size(). Chuck, was this the bug that hit you?
Seems to me, since you are going to rewrite your string anyway, you
might as well clear() it first, then resize(size). That'll take care
of creating a new representation. The problem with that is that it
will write over the string twice, first filling it with 0s then with
the read data. But think about it: if the string is shared, you
need to construct a new representation with the requested size
anyway, and it will have to be filled with 0s.
Still, suppose you wanted to avoid going over your string twice, what
you'd need is to create a string with an unitialized buffer and start
writing into it directly. There's only one way I can think of to
achieve that: have an input iterator from your "is" stream, such as
std::istream_iterator<char>(is), and use s.assign(is_begin, is_end),
assuming you can define and end that will stop reading after size
chars (don't even know how to do that with istream_iterator, and
there is no assign(int, InputIterator) method in string, sadly). In
any case, however, you then lose the benefit of the single is.read()
call, because the iterator is going to do ++iter and read character
by character. If your stream is buffered, there shouldn't much of an
impact, but then you have a double copy from stream buffer to string
buffer anyway, which is akin to going over your string twice.
In short, I don't think you can avoid the cost of going over your
string twice, so I can't see anything better than:
text_iarchive_impl<Archive>::load(std::string &s)
{
std::size_t size;
* this->This() >> size;
// skip separating space
is.get();
// borland de-allocator fixup
#if BOOST_WORKAROUND(_RWSTD_VER, BOOST_TESTED_AT(20101))
if(NULL != s.data())
#endif
+ s.clear();
s.resize(size);
is.read(const_cast<char *>(s.data()), size); // <== This looks
suspect
}
-- Hervé Brönnimann hervebronnimann_at_[hidden]