Parsing a binary file. What is a modern way?

Currently I do it so:

• load file to ifstream

• read this stream to char buffer[2]

• cast it to unsigned short: unsigned short len{ *((unsigned short*)buffer) };. Now I have length of a string.

That last risks a SIGBUS (if your character array happens to start at an odd address and your CPU can only read 16-bit values that are aligned at an even address), performance (some CPUs will read misaligned values but slower; others like modern x86s are fine and fast) and/or endianness issues. I'd suggest reading the two characters then you can say (x[0] << 8) | x[1] or vice versa, using htons if needing to correct for endianness.

• read a stream to vector<char> and create a std::string from this vector. Now I have string id.

No need... just read directly into the string:

std::string s(the_size, ' ');

if (input_fstream.read(&s[0], s.size()) &&
    input_stream.gcount() == s.size())
    ...use s...

• the same way read next 4 bytes and cast them to unsigned int. Now I have a stride. while not end of file read floats the same way - create a char bufferFloat[4] and cast *((float*)bufferFloat) for every float.

Better to read the data directly over the unsigned ints and floats, as that way the compiler will ensure correct alignment.

This works, but for me it looks ugly. Can I read directly to unsigned short or float or string etc. without char [x] creating? If no, what is the way to cast correctly (I read that style I'm using - is an old style)?

struct Data
{
    uint32_t x;
    float y[6];
};
Data data;
if (input_stream.read((char*)&data, sizeof data) &&
    input_stream.gcount() == sizeof data)
    ...use x and y...

Note the code above avoids reading data into potentially unaligned character arrays, wherein it's unsafe to reinterpret_cast data in a potentially unaligned char array (including inside a std::string) due to alignment issues. Again, you may need some post-read conversion with htonl if there's a chance the file content differs in endianness. If there's an unknown number of floats, you'll need to calculate and allocate sufficient storage with alignment of at least 4 bytes, then aim a Data* at it... it's legal to index past the declared array size of y as long as the memory content at the accessed addresses was part of the allocation and holds a valid float representation read in from the stream. Simpler - but with an additional read so possibly slower - read the uint32_t first then new float[n] and do a further read into there....

Practically, this type of approach can work and a lot of low level and C code does exactly this. "Cleaner" high-level libraries that might help you read the file must ultimately be doing something similar internally....

The C way, which would work fine in C++, would be to declare a struct:

#pragma pack(1)

struct contents {
   // data members;
};

Note that

• You need to use a pragma to make the compiler align the data as-it-looks in the struct;
• This technique only works with POD types

And then cast the read buffer directly into the struct type:

std::vector<char> buf(sizeof(contents));
file.read(buf.data(), buf.size());
contents *stuff = reinterpret_cast<contents *>(buf.data());

Now if your data's size is variable, you can separate in several chunks. To read a single binary object from the buffer, a reader function comes handy:

template<typename T>
const char *read_object(const char *buffer, T& target) {
    target = *reinterpret_cast<const T*>(buffer);
    return buffer + sizeof(T);
}

The main advantage is that such a reader can be specialized for more advanced c++ objects:

template<typename CT>
const char *read_object(const char *buffer, std::vector<CT>& target) {
    size_t size = target.size();
    CT const *buf_start = reinterpret_cast<const CT*>(buffer);
    std::copy(buf_start, buf_start + size, target.begin());
    return buffer + size * sizeof(CT);
}

And now in your main parser:

int n_floats;
iter = read_object(iter, n_floats);
std::vector<float> my_floats(n_floats);
iter = read_object(iter, my_floats);

Note: As Tony D observed, even if you can get the alignment right via #pragma directives and manual padding (if needed), you may still encounter incompatibility with your processor's alignment, in the form of (best case) performance issues or (worst case) trap signals. This method is probably interesting only if you have control over the file's format.

If it is not for learning purpose, and if you have freedom in choosing the binary format you'd better consider using something like protobuf which will handle the serialization for you and allow to interoperate with other platforms and languages.

If you cannot use a third party API, you may look at QDataStream for inspiration

• Documentation
• Source code