How to print out the contents of a PBYTE?

Question

I understand PBYTE is unsigned char* from Windows Data Types.

I want to be able to print all the contents, either using printf() or cout:

PBYTE buffer;
ULONG buffersize = NULL;
serializeData(data, buffer, buffersize); 
//this function serializes "data" and stores the data in buffer and updates bufferSize)..

Can you help me understand how to print this in C++?

`std::cout << (void*)buffer << std::endl;` should do the trick. — πάντα ῥεῖ, Oct 15 '20 at 20:00
@πάνταῥεῖ That will print the *address* of the memory block that `buffer` is pointing at. It will not print the *contents* of that memory block. — Remy Lebeau, Oct 15 '20 at 20:03
@Remy Oh, from the title it sounded they want to print the pointer address. I suspect they want to print the contents in hex format or such. All a bit unclear. — πάντα ῥεῖ, Oct 15 '20 at 20:08
@πάνταῥεῖ "*I want to be able to **print all the contents***" - seems pretty clear to me. — Remy Lebeau, Oct 15 '20 at 20:09

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 15 '20 at 20:08

If you want to print the memory address that buffer is pointing at, then you can do it like this:

PBYTE buffer;
ULONG buffersize = 0;
serializeData(data, buffer, buffersize); 
//this function serializes "data" and stores the data in buffer and updates bufferSize)...

printf("%p", buffer);
or
std::cout << (void*)buffer;

...

But, if you want to print the contents of the buffer, you need to loop through the buffer and print out each BYTE individually, eg:

PBYTE buffer;
ULONG buffersize = 0;
serializeData(data, buffer, buffersize); 
//this function serializes "data" and stores the data in buffer and updates bufferSize)...

for (DWORD i = 0; i < buffersize; ++i)
{
    printf("%02x ", buffer[i]);
    or
    std::cout << std::hex << std::setw(2) << std::setfill('0') << (unsigned int)buffer[i] << " ";
}

...

How to print out the contents of a PBYTE?

1 Answers1

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