C++: How to add raw binary data into source with Visual Studio?

Question

I have a binary file which i want to embed directly into my source code, so it will be compiled into the .exe file directly, instead of reading it from a file, so the data would already be in the memory when i launch the program.

How do i do this?

Only idea i got was to encode my binary data into base64, put it in a string variable and then decode it back to raw binary data, but this is tricky method which will cause pointless memory allocating. Also, i would like to store the data in the .exe as compact as the original data was.

Edit: The reason i thought of using base64 was because i wanted to make the source code files as small as possible too.

Answer 1

The easiest and most portable way would be to write a small program which converts the data to a C++ source, then compile that and link it into your program. This generated file might look something like:

unsigned char rawData[] =
{
    0x12, 0x34, // ...
};

Answer 2

There are tools for this, a typical name is "bin2c". The first search result is this page .

You need to make a char array, and preferably also make it static const .

In C:

Some care might be needed since you can't have a char -typed literal, and also because generally the signedness of C's char datatype is up to the implementation.

You might want to use a format such as

static const unsigned char my_data[] = { (unsigned char) 0xfeu, (unsigned char) 0xabu, /* ... */ };

Note that each unsigned int literal is cast to unsigned char , and also the 'u' suffix that makes them unsigned.

Since this question was for C++, where you can have a char -typed literal, you might consider using a format such as this, instead:

static const char my_data[] = { '\xfe', '\xab', /* ... */ };

since this is just an array of char, you could just as well use ordinary string literal syntax. Embedding zero-bytes should be fine, as long as you don't try to treat it as a string:

static const char my_data[] = "\xfe\xdab ...";

This is the most compact solution. In fact, you could probably use that for C, too.

Answer 3

You can use resource files (.rc). Sometimes they are bad, but for Windows based application that's the usual way.

Answer 4

Why base64? Just store the file as it is in one char* .