Write a string with binary mode vs text mode

Question

What's the difference with following codes:

Code #1: Using Binary Mode

int main()
{
    std::fstream w("D:\\file.txt", std::ios::out | std::ios::binary);

    char *p = "Hello World\r\nHi";

    w.write(p, strlen(p));

    // Close the file
    w.close();
}

Code #2: Using Text Mode

int main()
{
    std::fstream w("D:\\file.txt", std::ios::out);

    char *p = "Hello World\r\nHi";

    w.write(p, strlen(p));

    // Close the file
    w.close();
}

Does it matter whether I use binary or text mode in case of writing strings like this?

Since it looks like you're using Windows, in text mode `'\n'` gets written as the two characters `'\r' '\n'`. — Shawn, Apr 22 '19 at 02:06
The files will be different on windows because of the processing of `\n`. Look at it in a hex editor. — drescherjm, Apr 22 '19 at 02:06
In my code, I am using `w.write(..` for binary and text mode. Does it matter? — user963241, Apr 22 '19 at 02:13
Yes there will be differences as we said. The duplicate I linked also mentioned other differences. — drescherjm, Apr 22 '19 at 02:15
@drescherjm: for writing and reading unicode text files, do i need binary mode? — user963241, Apr 22 '19 at 02:22
No you don't need binary mode for that. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15911141/writing-unicode-to-a-file-in-c — drescherjm, Apr 22 '19 at 02:24

score 0 · Answer 1 · 2019-04-22T02:21:07.730

0

Basically, if you're working with text, bits represent text data, but in binary, bits represent custom data (not only text, but audio, image and etc). If you intend to work with text, I'd suggest you to use text mode, since it'll be less prone to get corrupted and easier to use with other applications.

edited Apr 22 '19 at 02:21

answered Apr 22 '19 at 02:13

Write a string with binary mode vs text mode

1 Answers1