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PO"Best" Input File Formats for C++?
 

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  1. PO"Best" Input File Formats for C++?
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    <p>I am starting work on a new piece of software that will end up needing some robust and expandable file IO. There are a lot of formats out there. XML, JSON, INI, etc. However, there are always plusses and minuses so I thought I would ask for some community input. </p> <p>Here are some rough requirements:</p> <ol> <li>The format is a "standard"...I don't want to reinvent the wheel if I don't have to. It doesn't have to be a formal IEEE standard, but something you could Google and get some information on as a new user, may have some support tools (editors) beyond vi. (Though the software users will generally be computer savvy and happy to use vi.)</li> <li>Easily integrates with C++. I don't want to have to pull along a 100mb library and three different compilers to get it up and running.</li> <li>Supports tabular input (2d, n-dimensional)</li> <li>Supports POD types</li> <li>Can expand as more inputs are required, binds well to variables, etc.</li> <li>Parsing speed is not terribly important</li> <li>Ideally, as easy to write (reflect) as it is to read</li> <li>Works well on Windows and Linux</li> <li>Supports compositing (one file referencing another file to read, and so on.)</li> <li>Human Readable</li> </ol> <p>In a perfect world, I would use a header-only library or some clean STL implementation, but I'm fine with leveraging Boost or some small external library if it works well.</p> <p>So, what are your thoughts on various formats? Drawbacks? Advantages?</p> <p><strong>Edit</strong></p> <p>Options to consider? Anything else to add?</p> <ul> <li>XML</li> <li>YAML</li> <li>SQLite</li> <li>Google Protocol Buffers</li> <li>Boost Serialization</li> <li>INI</li> <li>JSON</li> </ul>
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    1. COWhat kind(s) of data do you want to represent? English-only, or i18n an issue? How important is it to have a compact representation? Need to interoperate with other languages?
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    2. COFor a text format: XML - *with* the appropriate libraries. INI fails hierarchically/dimensional data and JSON, while darn nice to use from JavaScript, lacks some nice features and tooling of XML.
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    3. COC++ does not directly support structured files. You always need a piece of code to parse or generate something more complex than a pure binary or text file. XML/JSON are a fine choice and you can extend them by giving special meanings to things. You must realize, however, that when you have a lot of data, any format becomes poorly readable in a plain text editor.
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