How to create ptr to ifstream and use structures?[RESOLVED]

[ChuckB]

Hi,
I wrote a C++ piece of code to read a binary header (for a bitmap). It works well. I can load the image into an array. No problem!

At the bottom of this posting, you see how I created the object 'in' and read some binary data into 'h' which is a structure (abbreviated piece of code).

1. How would I create this object 'in' using new, then read the values into 'h'? Something like this?

ifstream *p = new ifstream("stone1.bmp",ios::binary | ios::in);

How to read data into object???

2. I can read the binary data into the structure, one member at a time. How would I read the data into the structure 'h' in one line?



Thanks,
ChuckB

  typedef struct {
    unsigned short type;
    unsigned long size;
    unsigned short reserved1;
    unsigned short reserved2;
    unsigned long offset;  
  } HEADER;
  HEADER h;  

  ifstream in("stone1.bmp",ios::binary | ios::in); 
  if(!in)exit(EXIT_FAILURE);

  in.read((char*)&h.type, sizeof h.type);
  cout << "File type: " << h.type << endl;
  in.read((char*)&h.size, sizeof h.size);
  cout << "File size: " << h.size << endl;