34.2 Copying and Assigning Stream Objects

Stream objects cannot simply be copied and assigned. Let us consider a practical example to see what this means. A program writes data to a file if a file name is specified on program call, or to the standard output stream cout if no file name is specified. You should write to one output stream in your program; this stream can be either a file stream or the standard output stream. The most obvious way to do this is to declare an output file stream object and assign it to cout, or to use cout directly. However, you can't do it this way:

#include <iostream>                          // for cout, endl
#include <fstream>                           // for ofstream

int main(int argc, char argv[])
{
  std::ofstream fil;
  if (argc > 1)
  {  fil.open(argv[1]);
    std::cout = fil;                            // can't do this !!!
  } 
  // output to cout, for example 
  std::cout << "Hello world!" << std::endl;
}

This solution is bad for at least three reasons. First, the predefined stream objects std::cin, std::cout, std::cerr, and std::clog (and their wide character counterparts) have special properties and are treated differently from other streams. If you could reassign them, as done with cout in the example above, you might lose some of their special properties. Second, if allowed, assignment and copying of streams would be hazardous due to the possibility of the two copies sharing the same stream buffer. Which of the copies would be responsible for deleting the buffer object? For these reasons, the base class for iostreams has private assignment and copy constructors to prevent you from doing this.

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NOTE -- Stream objects must never be copied or assigned to each other.

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To achieve the equivalent effect of a copy, you might consider copying each data member individually. This can be done as follows:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::ofstream out;
  if (argc > 1)
    out.open(argv[1]);
  else {
    out.copyfmt(std::cout);                                  //1
    out.clear(std::cout.rdstate());                          //2
    out.basic_ios<char>::rdbuf(std::cout.rdbuf());           //3
  }
  // output to out, for example
  out << "Hello world!" << std::endl;
}

Please note the little snag here. After the call to rdbuf(), the buffer is shared between the two streams, as shown in Figure 30:

Figure 30: Copying a stream's internal data results in a shared buffer

Whether or not you intend to share a stream buffer among streams depends on your application. In any case, it is important that you realize the stream buffer is shared after a call to rdbuf(); in other words, you must monitor the lifetime of the stream buffer object and make sure it exceeds the lifetime of the stream. In our little example above, we use the standard output stream's buffer. Since the standard streams are static objects, their stream buffers have longer lifetimes that most other objects, so we are safe. However, whenever you share a stream buffer among other stream objects, you must carefully consider the stream buffer's lifetime.

The example above has another disadvantage we haven't considered yet, as shown in the following code:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::ofstream out;

  if (argc > 1)
    out.open(argv[1]);
  else {
    out.copyfmt(std::cout);                                  //1
    out.clear(std::cout.rdstate());                          //2
    out.basic_ios<char>::rdbuf(std::cout.rdbuf());           //3
  }

  out << "Hello world!" << std::endl;

}

As we copy the standard output stream's entire internal data, we also copy its special behavior. For instance, the standard output stream is synchronized with the standard input stream. (See Chapter 35 for further details.) If our output file stream out is a copy of std::cout, it is forced to synchronize its output operations with all input operations from std::cin. This might not be desired, especially since synchronization is a time-consuming activity. Here is a more efficient approach using only the stream buffer of the standard output stream:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::filebuf* fb = new std::filebuf;                        //1

  std::ostream out((argc>1)?                                  //2
    fb->open(argv[1],
             std::ios_base::out|std::ios_base::trunc):        //3
    std::cout.rdbuf());                                       //4
  if (out.rdbuf() != fb)
    delete fb;
  out << "Hello world!" << std::endl;
}

As in the original example, out inserts through the standard output stream's buffer, but lacks the special properties of a standard stream.

Here is an alternative solution that uses file descriptors, a nonstandard feature of this implementation of the standard iostreams.

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NOTE -- This feature was available in the traditional iostreams, but is not offered by the standard iostreams. This implementation of the standard iostreams retains the old feature for backward compatibility with the traditional iostreams, but it is nonstandard. Using it might make your application nonportable to other standard iostream libraries.

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int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::ofstream out;
  if (argc > 1)
     out.open(argv[1]);                                         //1
  else
     out.rdbuf()->open(STDOUT_FILENO);                          //2
  out << "Hello world!" << std::endl;
}

The effect is the same as in the previous solution, because the standard output stream std::cout is connected to the C standard file stdout. This is the simplest of all solutions, because it doesn't involve reassigning or sharing stream buffers. The output file stream's buffer is simply connected to the right file. However, this is a nonstandard and nonportable solution.

If you do not want to deal with stream buffers at all, you can also use pointers to streams instead. Here is an example:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::ostream* fp;                                           //1
  if (argc > 1)
     fp = new std::ofstream(argv[1]);                         //2
  else
     fp = &std::cout                                          //3

  *fp << "Hello world!" << std::endl;                         //4
  if (fp != &std::cout)
     delete fp;
}

Working with pointers has a drawback: you must create an output file stream object on the heap and, in principle, you must worry about deleting the object again, which might lead you into other dire straits.

In summary, creating a copy of a stream is not trivial and should only be done if you really need a copy of a stream object. In many cases, it is more appropriate to use references or pointers to stream objects instead, or to share a stream buffer between two streams.

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NOTE -- Never create a copy of a stream object when a reference or a pointer to the stream object would suffice, or when a shared stream buffer would solve the problem.

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