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

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-17 17:02:00

At 11:29 AM 11/16/2000 -0500, Beman Dawes wrote:

 > ...
 >
 >Still other people viewed the need in terms of operations on
 >streams, without a need for actual objects.
 >
 > ...
 >
 >It would be really nice if someone good at sifting through disparate
 >requirements would put together a proposal broad enough to meet multiple
 >people's needs but narrow enough not to focus on what is basically a 
pretty
 >simple need.

The internal objects Darin and I have discussed are really, really 
important when you need them.  But preserving legacy code and/or doing 
ultra high speed bulk I/O are esoteric compared to just stream reading or 
writing external data in a portable format.

So in thinking about this further, I realize that for boost the first 
priority should be portable external format integer (and other data types) 
operations on streams.  They should include fixed length formats, but also 
(per Dave's suggestion) variable length data.

What would (the fixed length flavor) such functionality look like?

     int_least32_t xport_int_read4( istream & source );
     uint_least32_t xport_uint_read4( istream & source );
     int_least32_t xport_int_read4_little_endian( istream & source );
     uint_least32_t xport_uint_read4_little_endian( istream & source );

     void xport_int_write4( ostream & target, int_least32_t source );
     void xport_uint_write4( ostream & target, uint_least32_t source );
     void xport_int_write4_little_endian( ostream & target, int_least32_t 
source );
     void xport_uint_write4_little_endian( ostream & target, uint_least32_t 
source );

That doesn't seem very inspired.  Anyone have a better way?

--Beman