Since I’ve been working lately on legacy projects, filled with C-style buffer containers like void*, char*, byte*, I’ve started replacing these types of buffers with something a bit more safe and modern, if I might say so.
The new buffer containers I’ve used are std::vector. The replacement would look like this:
- let’s take a classic C-style buffer
void* pBuffer = ...;
size_t size = ...;
-
assigning the contents to a std::vector would look like this:
std::vector<unsigned char> vBuffer; vBuffer.insert(vBuffer.end(), (unsigned char*)pBuffer, (unsigned char*)pBuffer+size); -
now the same buffer data can be used by accessing the std::vector internal raw container:
So you can start “drop-in” replacing pBuffer with vBuffer.data().vBuffer.data()
The benefits would be: -
you have RAII style memory management, no more manual memory freeing
-
code looks cleaner, easier to read and maintain
-
you can use STL algorithms to manipulate the data
Of course, it’s not a 1-size-fits-all solution. There may be times when you have to use the raw, dynamic allocated buffers and pass them around, depending on the context.
I’ve seen people use std::string for the same purpose of holding binary data. It is possible, but it may be misleading to maintainers, since strings are supposed to be strings and contain string data.