Foundations of Qt Development

CHAPTER 8Files, Streams, and XML

Handling files is a complex problem when it comes to cross-platform applications because even the most basic features can vary across platforms. For instance, Unix systems use the slash (/) as a separator in paths, whereas the Windows platform uses a backslash (\). And this is just the beginning; you'll also encounter an unnerving array of fundamental differences such as different line endings and encodings, each of which can cause all sorts of strange problems to crop up when you attempt to coax your application into running on multiple platforms.

To overcome this problem, Qt offers a range of classes to handle paths, files, and streams. Qt also handles XML files—a format structuring the contents in a portable ...