17.13. Wrap-Up

In this chapter, we presented various file-processing techniques to manipulate persistent data. You learned that data is stored in computers in the form of 0s and 1s, and that combinations of these values form bytes, fields, records and eventually files. You were introduced to the differences between character-based and byte-based streams, and to several file-processing class templates in header file <fstream>. Then, you learned how to use sequential file processing to manipulate records stored in order, by the record-key field. You also learned how to use random-access files to instantly retrieve and manipulate fixed-length records. We presented a substantial transaction-processing case study using a random-access file to achieve "instant"-access processing. Finally, we discussed the basic concepts of object serialization. In the next chapter, we discuss typical string-manipulation operations provided by class template basic_string. We also introduce string stream-processing capabilities that allow strings to be input from and output to memory.