Unsafe and reading from files

Novelty

JIS — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:09:00 GMT

Novelty

JIS — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:10:00 GMT

re: Unsafe and reading from files

Einar — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:13:00 GMT

What would be my second mistake, I wonder (not that I doubt having made one...)?

Interestingly, I first read your article on unsafe code looking for ways to optimize code reading GPS data(!) Unfortunately, the GPS file was in ascii format, so I couldn't apply the technique you're showing here. Someone should take the time to produce an optimized yet flexible .NET library for reading GPS data from the serial port, a binary file, an ascii file etc. Perhaps someone already has?

re: Unsafe and reading from files

Einar — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 18:05:00 GMT

Oh, I forgot to say thanks for pulling my request out of bit oblivion and making a blog post of it! Thanks :)

re: Unsafe and reading from files

Einar — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:59:00 GMT

Oh, and I take it there's no equally simple solution for transforming an existing big-endian structure into a little-endian struct?

re: Unsafe and reading from files

Comments on alternative — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:25:00 GMT

I like the pointer manipulation you are using to cast the struct. What are your thoughts on code like the following?

public Boxcar(byte [] data)
{
GCHandle hBoxCar = GCHandle.Alloc(data,
GCHandleType.Pinned);

IntPtr pBoxCar = hBoxCar.AddrOfPinnedObject();

Marshal.PtrToStructure(pBoxCar, this);

hBoxCar.Free();
}

This uses the same struct layout attribute as in your example and it’s definitely not as simple as yours.

Thanks
-Mike