Writing multiple variable types to a text file using ofstream

Question

I just want to write a simple text file:

ofstream test;
test.clear();
test.open("test.txt",ios::out);
float var = 132.26;
BYTE var2[2];
var2[0] = 45; 
var2[1] = 55;
test << var << (BYTE)var2[0] << (BYTE)var2[1];
test.close();

But in the output file I get:

132.26-7

I don't get what the problem is...

Answer 1

I think that the problem might be that BYTE type might be a typedef for char. If this were the case, then whenevernyou try to write out a BYTE to a stream, it will print the ASCII character corresponding to that byte rather than the numeric value of the byte. Notice that the characters - and 7 correspond to ASCII values 45 and 55, for example.

To fix this, you'll want to do two things:

1. Typecast the BYTEs you're writing to some integral type like int or short before writing them to the file. This forces the stream to write a numeric value rather than a character.
2. Output some amount of whitespace in-between all of the data you output. Right now everythingnis bleeding together because there are no spaces, which makes things harder to read.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

BYTE is nothing but an alias for unsigned char. By default, when you output a char in a stream, it is converted to its ASCII character. In the ASCII table, the character 45 is '-' and the character 55 is '7'.

Try this instead:

test << var << (int)var2[0] << (int)var2[1];