Creating an input stream from constant memory

Question

I have some data in a buffer pointed to by a const char* pointer. The data is just an ASCII string. I know its size. I would like to be able to read it in the same way data is read from streams. I'm looking for a solution that would allow me to write code like this:

// for example, data points to a string "42 3.14 blah"
MemoryStreamWrapper in(data, data_size);
int x;
float y;
std::string w;
in >> x >> y >> w;

Important condition: the data must not be copied or altered in any way (otherwise I'd just use a string stream. To my best knowledge, it isn't possible to create a string stream from a const char pointer without copying the data.)

Answer 1

The way to do this is to create a suitable stream buffer. This can, e.g., be done like this:

#include <streambuf>
#include <istream>

struct membuf: std::streambuf {
    membuf(char const* base, size_t size) {
        char* p(const_cast<char*>(base));
        this->setg(p, p, p + size);
    }
};
struct imemstream: virtual membuf, std::istream {
    imemstream(char const* base, size_t size)
        : membuf(base, size)
        , std::istream(static_cast<std::streambuf*>(this)) {
    }
};

The only somewhat awkward thing is the const_cast<char*>() in the stream buffer: the stream buffer won't change the data but the interface still requires char* to be used, mainly to make it easier to change the buffer in "normal" stream buffers. With this, you can use imemstream as a normal input stream:

imemstream in(data, size);
in >> value;

Answer 2

The only way would be to subclass std::istream (which also requires subclassing std::streambuf) to create your own stream class that reads from constant memory.

It's not as easy as it sounds because the the C++ standard library stream classes are pretty messy and badly designed. I don't think it's worth it unless you need it to scale a lot.