Re: [boost] Serialization Library Review

From: Matthias Troyer (troyer_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-25 03:41:45

On Monday, November 25, 2002, at 05:22 AM, Robert Ramey wrote:

> Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 20:39:03 +0100
> From: Matthias Troyer <troyer_at_[hidden]>
>
>> you seem to have misunderstood that: a function
>
>> void basic_oarchive::write_array(double* p, std::size_t n)
>
>> will work for ALL contiguous data: C-arrays, std::vector, ublas and 
>> MTL
>> arrays, and so on
>
> Hmmm - what I don't understand is how this would be different that 
> calling
>
> void basic_oarchive::write_array(void* p, size_t count)
>
> which has been in the library from the very beginning.
>
> So you can just as well wite
>
> class MyClass
> {
> 	double d[100000];
> 	void save(basic_oarchive &ar)
> 	{
> 		write_binary(d, sizeof(d));
> 	}
> 	...
> };
>
> Incidently, this would work for any kind of archive - not just the
> binary ones.

The difference is that with this approach you cannot do any 
transformation on the type (e.g. transforming the byte order of 
integers into a platform independent  format, or converting floating 
point formats). For this reason we need separate write and read 
functions for each of the fundamental types.

Matthias