Reading char array from QDataStream

Jansi

I have a binary file from an old game Fallout 2 which contains these items (simplified):

unsigned int textSize = 3;
char[textSize] text = "abc";
// next item
unsigned int textSize = 6;
char[textSize] text = "abcdef";
// and so on

Currently, I read the values like this:

    QFile file("master.dat");
    file.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly);

    QDataStream stream(&file);
    stream.setByteOrder(QDataStream::LittleEndian);

    for(qint32 i = 0; i < number_of_items; ++i)
    {
        qint32 length;
        QString text;

        stream >> length;

        for(int j = 0; j < length; ++j)
        {
            qint8 character;
            stream >> character;
            text.append(character);
        }
        qDebug() << "Text    = " << text;
    }
    file.flush();
    file.close();

It works fine, but it feels like I am not doing it the right way. I also tried doing this:

qint32 length;
stream >> length;
char *text = new char[length]
stream.readRawData(text, length);
qDebug() << text;
delete[] text;

but when I do it like this, the text I get has some garbage at the end. For example, instead of "NAR_VC5.ACM" I get "NAR_VC5.ACMMd\u0006" which looks like I am not allocating the correct size for the string or it is missing the terminating character \0?

What is the correct way of using QDataStream for this purpose?

VRonin

I will not go in the details of a reverse-engineered file format and just answer your question (here I'm assuming text is encoded using utf-8):

qint32 length;
QByteArray rawText;
QString text;
stream >> length;
rawText.resize(length);
if(stream.readRawData(rawText.data(),length)==length){
text = QString::fromUtf8(rawText);
}

aha_1980

@Jansi

well, you will need to make your buffers larger and NULL-terminate them youself.

Example: char x[] = "abc"; will be NULL-terminated and the same as char y[4] = "abc";, while char z[3] = "abc"; will not be terminated as the buffer is to small.

regards