Getting garbage chars when reading GLSL files

Question

I run into the following problem.I load my shaders from files.The shader program ,when trying to compile, throws these errors for the vertex and fragment shaders:

Vertex info

0(12) : error C0000: syntax error, unexpected $undefined at token ""

Fragment info

0(10) : error C0000: syntax error, unexpected $undefined at token ""

When inspecting the loaded content of the files I can see all kinds of garbage text is attached at the beginnings and the ends of the shader files.Like this one:

#version 330

layout (location = 0) in vec4 position;
layout (location = 1) in vec4 color;

smooth out vec4 theColor;

void main()
{
gl_Position = position;
theColor = color;
}ýýýý««««««««þîþîþîþ

The methods loading the shaders look as follows:

void ShaderLoader::loadShaders(char * vertexShaderFile,char *fragmentShaderFile){


vs = loadFile(vertexShaderFile,vlen);
    fs = loadFile(fragmentShaderFile,flen);

}
char *ShaderLoader::loadFile(char *fname,GLint &fSize){
ifstream::pos_type size;
char * memblock;
string text;

// file read based on example in cplusplus.com tutorial
ifstream file (fname, ios::in|ios::binary|ios::ate);
if (file.is_open())
{
size = file.tellg();
fSize = (GLuint) size;
memblock = new char [size];
file.seekg (0, ios::beg);
file.read (memblock, size);
file.close();
cout << "file " << fname << " loaded" << endl;
text.assign(memblock);
}
else
{
cout << "Unable to open file " << fname << endl;
exit(1);
}
return memblock;
}

I tried to change the encoding from UTF-8 top ANSI ,also tried to edit outside the visual studio but the problem still persists .Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You're using C++, so I suggest you leverage that. Instead of reading into a self allocated char array I suggest you read into a std::string:

#include <string>
#include <fstream>

std::string loadFileToString(char const * const fname)
{
    std::ifstream ifile(fname);
    std::string filetext;

    while( ifile.good() ) {
        std::string line;
        std::getline(ifile, line);
        filetext.append(line + "\n");
    }

    return filetext;
}

That automatically takes care of all memory allocation and proper delimiting -- the keyword is RAII: Resource Allocation Is Initialization. Later on you can upload the shader source with something like

void glcppShaderSource(GLuint shader, std::string const &shader_string)
{
    GLchar const *shader_source = shader_string.c_str();
    GLint const shader_length = shader_string.size();

    glShaderSource(shader, 1, &shader_source, &shader_length);
}

void load_shader(GLuint shaderobject, char * const shadersourcefilename)
{
    glcppShaderSource(shaderobject, loadFileToString(shadersourcefilename));
}

Answer 2

It looks like all you have to do is allocate one more byte of memory in which you can place a null ('\0'):

...
memblock = new char[1 + fSize]; 
file.seekg (0, ios::beg);  
file.read (memblock, size);  
file.close();  
memblock[size] = '\0';
...

edit

I changed my code to use fSize in the array rather than size, since it is a GLint, which is just a typedef over an integer. Also, I tried this fix on my machine, and it works as far as I can tell - no junk at the beginning, and none at the end.