[boost] Re: Re: Re: Using Serialization for binary marshalling

From: Ian McCulloch (ianmcc_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-05-05 18:11:21

Dave Harris wrote:

> In-Reply-To: <95C853D0-9EAF-11D8-BFD9-000A95DC1C98_at_[hidden]>
> troyer_at_[hidden] (Matthias Troyer) wrote (abridged):
>> As I see it the current serialization library allows both options,
>> depending on your preferences. Any archive may choose which types it
>> view as fundamental, but both have their disadvantages:
> 
> I would use variable length integers. Use as many bytes as you need for
> the integer's actual value. That way the archive format is independent of
> whether short, int, long or some other type was used by the outputting
> program. It can also give you byte order independence for free.
> 
> Specifically, I'd use a byte oriented scheme where the low 7 bits of each
> byte contribute to the current number, and the high bit says whether there
> are more bytes to come.
[...]
> Thus integers less than 128 take 1 byte, less than 16,000 take 2 bytes
> etc. This gives a compact representation while still supporting 64-bit
> ints and beyond. You can use boost::numeric_cast<> or similar to bring the
> uintmax_t down to a smaller size.

Nice idea.  I was thinking along the lines of how to achieve
high-performance, with shared memory & fast network message passing in
mind.  I think now though, this is probably too specialized an application
for boost::serialization.

Cheers,
Ian