Reading and writing objects from/to binary files
In the previous recipe, we saw how to write and read raw data (that is, unstructured data) to and from a file. Many times, however, we have to persist and load objects. Writing and reading in the manner shown in the previous recipe works for POD types only. For anything else, we must explicitly decide what is actually written or read, as writing or reading pointers, virtual tables, and any sort of meta data is not only irrelevant, but also semantically wrong. These operations are commonly referred to as serialization and deserialization. In this recipe, we will see how we can serialize and deserialize both POD and non-POD types to and from binary files.
Getting ready
It is recommended that you first read the previous recipe, Reading and writing raw data from/to binary files, before you continue. You should also know what POD and non-POD types are and how operators can be overloaded.
For the examples in this recipe, we will use the foo and foopod...
