Getting Started

• Download
• Installation
• Linking
• Where to go from here

Download

Download the latest distribution file from SourceForge.net at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=152971. This will be an archive file named ioflib-ver.tar.gz or ioflib-ver.zip (both have the exact same content), where ver will be the version number of the library.

There is no installer (*.msi or *.exe) for Windows since it is not necessary: you just need to put the contents in the folder of your choice, as explained next.

Installation

Extract the contents of the distribution file (that you just downloaded) to a folder of your choice (e.g. your home directory, 'My Documents', etc). In that folder you will see a new subfolder called ioflib-ver containing the following tree of subfolders:

where_you_unpacked
    +---ioflib-0_8_0
        +---doc
        +---include
        ¦   +---iof
        +---test

There is no library to build, no source files to compile (everything is templates in header files), so YOU'RE DONE!!

If you want, you can copy just the 'include/iof' directory to a more accessible location (e.g., into /usr/local/include or into "Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include"). You should know how to do this, but here are some details:

Unix:

Copy the include/iof folder to a location of your choice. You can then add that location to your include path for your compiler. E.g.

> cp -r include/iof /usr/local/include
> ls /usr/local/include
iof
> g++ -I /usr/local/includes ...

Windows:

• Open root of distribution
• Go to the folder named 'include'
• Select the folder named 'iof'
• Drag it to a location of your choice
• You can then add this location to your include path for your compiler

The 'location of your choice' would probably be somewhere under "My Documents" or in the Vc7 tree etc. The test subfolder may be a good place to look at the compiler switches used for both g++ and Vc7 compilers.

Linking

Regardless of where you put things, if the folder that contains the iof folder is called YOUR_INCLUDES then all you have to do is tell your compiler to add the folder YOUR_INCLUDES to its inclusion search path. That's because iof was designed so that any iof #include directive has the form #include "iof/an_iof_header.hpp". Just writing #include "an_iof_header.hpp" will not work (if it does, expect it to not work next time you upgrade iof <g>).

Where to go from here

The General usage explains the classes and functions available in the iof library, and many possible ways of using them.

The Output Specification Table gives a summary of all the formatted output specification characters.

The Input Specification Table (under construction) does the same for formatted input.

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