Hallo David!

 DVH> runtime. I must say though, the C++ streams are bloated too much. 
 DVH> They aren't even as powerful as the functions in 'stdio.h' that I have 
 DVH> been coding my own streams. Do you have any tips for me?

Yes. Use the routines from . No one prevents you from using
them in C++ programs. 

About the most important thing in C++ programming is to have a good class
design. Having a good class design includes to know when it is appropriate
to build a class hierarchy to solve a problem and when it is better to just
to procedural programming. 

In case of input and output, it surely is an appalling idea to build a
class hierarchy to do input/output operations, and the iostream syntax with
the > operators surely looks nice, but for some
applications, especially those that make heavy I/O like cryptography does,
the design of the iostream classes is not suited well. So simply don't use
them if you find out that they are too slow or do not provide the features
that you would need. 

Viele Gr��e,
Tobias

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