Re: [boost] Portable binary integers [was generic polyvalent I/O]

From: David Abrahams (abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-16 15:52:17

From: "Gary Powell" <Gary.Powell_at_[hidden]>
> > My feeling has always been that a compact, machine-independent,
> > variable-length number representation (e.g. high bit set indicates the
end
> > of the number) was the way to go if you care about portability at all.
The
> > length of an int/long/char/short/wchar_t/float/double... on any given
> > machine is too variable to make this work otherwise. It's also nice
> > because
> > you can detect overflows.
> >
> This all depends on what you mean by "portablity", do you mean seamless
data
> interchange? Or that two dissimilar machine architectures given the same
> inputs will generate the same outputs?

The former, with the latter as a goal but not neccessarily an absolute
requirement. If you interchange the data "seamlessly", but the source and
destination machines don't treat it the same way, it's not of much use, is
it?

-Dave