Assign std::vector<std::byte> to std::vector<char> WITHOUT copying memory

Question

I have a function that returns a std::vector<std::byte>

I am aware that std::byte is not a character type nor an integral type, and that converting it to char is only possible through a typecast. So far so good.

So I would like (in cases where I know that the vector only contains character data) to transfer ownership of the underlying buffer from the std::vector<std::byte> to a std::vector<char> using std::move, so as to avoid copying the entire underlying buffer.

When I try doing this, I get this error:

no suitable user-defined conversion from "std::vector<std::byte, std::allocatorstd::byte>" to "std::vector<char,std::allocator>" exists

Is this at all possible using C++? I think there are real use cases where one would want to do this

Answer 1

I would probably leave the data in the original vector<byte> and make a small class that keeps a reference to the original vector<byte> and does the necessary casting when you need it.

Example:

#include <cstddef>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

template<typename T>
struct char_view {
    explicit char_view(std::vector<T>& bytes) : bv(bytes) {}

    char_view(const char_view&) = default;
    char_view(char_view&&) = delete;
    char_view& operator=(const char_view&) = delete;
    char_view& operator=(char_view&&) = delete;

    // capacity
    size_t element_count() const { return bv.size(); }
    size_t size() const { return element_count() * sizeof(T); }

    // direct access
    auto data() const { return reinterpret_cast<const char*>(bv.data()); }
    auto data() { return reinterpret_cast<char*>(bv.data()); }

    // element access
    char operator[](size_t idx) const { return data()[idx]; }
    char& operator[](size_t idx) { return data()[idx]; }

    // iterators - with possibility to iterate over individual T elements
    using iterator = char*;
    using const_iterator = const char*;

    const_iterator cbegin(size_t elem = 0) const { return data() + elem * sizeof(T); }
    const_iterator cend(size_t elem) const { return data() + (elem + 1) * sizeof(T); }
    const_iterator cend() const { return data() + size(); }

    const_iterator begin(size_t elem = 0) const { return cbegin(elem); }
    const_iterator end(size_t elem) const { return cend(elem); }
    const_iterator end() const { return cend(); }
    
    iterator begin(size_t elem = 0) { return data() + elem * sizeof(T); }
    iterator end(size_t elem) { return data() + (elem + 1) * sizeof(T); }
    iterator end() { return data() + size(); }

private:
    std::vector<T>& bv;
};

int main() {
    using std::byte;

    std::vector<byte> byte_vector{byte{'a'}, byte{'b'}, byte{'c'}};

    char_view cv(byte_vector);

    for(char& ch : cv) {
        std::cout << ch << '\n';
    }
}

Output:

a
b
c

A simpler option if you only need const access could be to create a string_view:

template<typename T>
std::string_view to_string_view(const std::vector<T>& v) {
    return {reinterpret_cast<const char*>(v.data()), v.size() * sizeof(T)};
}
//...
auto strv = to_string_view(byte_vector);

Answer 2

std::vector does not allow attaching or detaching to memory allocations , other than moves from a vector of exactly the same type. This has been proposed but people raised (valid) objections about the allocator for attaching and so on.

The function returning vector<byte> constrains you to work with a vector<byte> as your data container unless you want to copy the data out.

Of course, you can alias the bytes as char in-place for doing character operations.