CODEWITHSUNDEEP
utf-8uwpc++-cli
lcfr
lcfr

Reputation: 33

Decoding of char array data

I have a mesh from which I need to read the vertex positions of but I can just get a buffer with that data, which I seemingly can get as an utf-8 char array.

Currently I'm getting the data from the buffer into the array I metioned and wirte it into a char* but i can't get the decoding correctly or so it seems.

The following code reads the dara from the buffer:

char* GetDataFromIBuffer(Windows::Storage::Streams::IBuffer^ container)
{
   unsigned int bufferLength = container->Length;
   auto dataReader = Windows::Storage::Streams::DataReader::FromBuffer(container);
   Platform::Array<unsigned char>^ managedBytes =
    ref new Platform::Array<unsigned char>(bufferLength);
   dataReader->ReadBytes(managedBytes);

  char * bytes = new char[bufferLength]; 

  for (unsigned int i = 0; i < bufferLength; i++)
  {
    if (managedBytes[i] == '\0')
    {
        bytes[i] = '0';
    }
    else
    {
        bytes[i] = managedBytes[i];
    }
  }
}

I can see the data in debug mode but i need a method to make it readable and write it into a file, where i can copy the mesh data and draw the mesh in a seperate program.

The following image shows the array data which can be seen in the array:
debug mode

Upvotes: 1

Views: 407

Answers (1)

Anselme Fran&#231;ois
Anselme Fran&#231;ois

Reputation: 74

Be careful not to mix up text encoding and data types.

char is a type often used for buffers because it has the size of a byte, but that doesn't mean that the data contained in the buffer is text.

Your debug view seem to confirm that the data inside your buffer is not text, because when interpreted as text, it gives weird characters such as 'ÿ', '^', etc...

UTF-8 is a way to encode unicode text, so it has nothing to do with binary data.

You need to find a way to cast your buffer data info the internal type of the data, it should be documented where you got that data (maybe it's just an array of floats ?)

Upvotes: 1

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