Two way serialization function

A trick to avoid having to keep the serialization code for input and output in sync is to use the same code for both input and output:

struct Object {

template <>

STREAM & serialize(STREAM & stream) {

return stream & a & b & c;

}

int a, b, c;

};

Here we have used & as our serialization operator. We could use any operator we like.

We then just implement the operator to do the right thing for our input and output streams:

template < > InputArchive & operator &(InputArchive &a, int &v) {

a.read(&v, sizeof(v));

return a;

}




template < > OutputArchive & operator & (OutputArchive &a, int &v) {

a.write(&v, sizeof(v));

return a;

}

These are both template specializations of a generic streaming template.

template <>

STREAM & operator &(STREAM & stream, T & t) {

t.serialize(stream);

}

Now we can stream all kinds of types either by implementing serialize in the type or by defining a template specialization of operator & for that type.