How to read entire stream into a std::string?

Question

I\'m trying to read an entire stream (multiple lines) into a string.

I\'m using this code, and it works, but it\'s offending my sense of style... Surely there\'s an

Answer 1

I'm late to the party, but here is a fairly efficient solution:

std::string gulp(std::istream &in)
{
    std::string ret;
    char buffer[4096];
    while (in.read(buffer, sizeof(buffer)))
        ret.append(buffer, sizeof(buffer));
    ret.append(buffer, in.gcount());
    return ret;
}

I did some benchmarking, and it turns out that the std::istreambuf_iterator technique (used by the accepted answer) is actually much slower. On gcc 4.4.5 with -O3, it's about a 4.5x difference on my machine, and the gap becomes wider with lower optimization settings.