Re: [boost] Endian library - request for comments

From: Marsh J. Ray (marsh.boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-05-31 22:22:24

Beman Dawes wrote:
>  Rene Rivera wrote:
> > int_be8_t
> > int_le8_t
> > uint_be8_t
 >> uint_le8_t

I like it.

>  int_b1_t
>  int_l1_t
>  uint_b1_t
>  uint_l1_t

I'd vote to keep the 'e'.

On many fonts/displays the lowercase 'L'  and digit one are nearly 
indistinguishable. While this probably isn't an overriding concern in 
the naming of most identifiers, consider how commonly-used the 'l1' or 
'l16' versions would be. Also, 'll' is likely to be used as a prefix for 
"long long".

>
>  I tried it both ways over the years. The problem with using bit sizes
>  is that a programmer is often counts these things, and always in
>  terms of bytes. Bytes is just more convenient than bits.
>  <>
>  Also, working in terms of bytes seems to signal to readers that
>  something special is going on - int_b32_t is more likely to be
>  mistakenly viewed as just another typedef for an int32_t than bin4 or
>  bin4_t.

I think the bit-count nomenclature is currently far more widely used, 
and specifically by boost/cstdint.hpp. Consider the confusion that would 
occur between with int8_t being a char while int_l8_t is a long long!

- Marsh