Getting desired binary data ranges from std::istreambuf_iterator and std::ifstream

Question

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

int main()
{
    std::ifstream file(\"data.bin\", std::ios::bin         


        

Answer 1

The class std::istreambuf_iterator iterates over the characters extracted from a std::basic_istream> or, actually, its std::basic_streambuf>. That is, given a specific stream type, there is no choice for the std::istreambuf_iterator. Also note that the IOStream layer is not intended to operate on binary files, despite the std::ios_base::binary operation which is passed to the stream buffers.

If you want to extract shorts (or any other type than the stream's character type) you'd need to create a suitable iterator yourself which takes the chosen binary format the file was written in into account. This iterator can be built in terms of std::istreambuf_iterator or directly access the std::streambuf.