Boost C++ cross-platform (Windows & Mac) serialization of std::wstring

Question

I am implementing serialization using Boost C++ libraries in a program that is built for Windows (using Visual Studio 2008) and Mac (using GCC). The program uses wide strings (std::wstring) in about 30 of its classes. Depending on the platform, when I save to a file (by means of boost::archive::text_woarchive), the wide strings are represented differently within the output file.

Saved under Windows:

H*e*l*l*o* *W*o*r*l*d*!* ...

Saved under MacOSX:

H***e***l***l***o*** ***W***o***r***l***d***!*** ...

where * is a NULL character.

When I try to read a file created under Windows using the Mac build (and vice versa), my program crashes.

From my understanding so far, Windows natively uses 2 bytes per wide character while MacOSX (and I suppose Unix in general) uses 4 bytes.

I have come across possible solutions such as utf8_codecvt_facet.cpp, UTF8-CPP, ICU, and Dinkumware, but I have yet to see an example that will work with what I already have (e.g., I would prefer not re-writing five months of serialization work at this point):

std::wofstream ofs( "myOutputFile" );
boost::archive::text_woarchive oa( ... );
//... what do I put here? ...
oa << myMainClass;

myMainClass contains wide strings and Boost smart pointers to other classes that, in turn, get serialized.

Answer 1

wofstream is typedef basic_ofstream<wchar_t, char_traits<wchar_t> > wofstream;

on linux, you need to declare a custom ofstream to deal with 16-bit characters (on linux). This can be done as follows:

typedef std::uint16_t Char16_t;
typedef basic_ofstream<Char16_t, char_traits<Char16_t> > wofstream_16;

Now wofstream_16 can be used seamlessly on different platforms to deal with 16-bit wide chars.