Re: [boost] [rfc] I/O Library Design

From: Ares Lagae (ares.lagae_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-18 06:37:50

Mathias Gaunard wrote:

> I personally think that there is no use in distinguishing between text
> and binary I/O. For I/O, you need a binary representation. To get it,
> you can serialize your object any way you like. This shouldn't be the
> job of a "binary formatting layer", even though having separate
> utilities to serialize/unserialize basic types to common representations
> would be useful (double to Little Endian IEEE 754 Double-precision for
> example).

I think there is definitely a need for binary I/O. It is not just a matter
of serializing your objects in memory:

- Is your serialized object model portable between different compilers and
operating systems? If not, you need to fix a binary external data
representation, and read/write it using a binary formatting layer.

- Is your serialized object model compatible with serialized object models
of different languages? (Suppose you need to get serialized data from C++
to Java.) If not, you need to fix a binary external data representation,
and read/write it with a binary formatting layer.

- Does you serialized object model map to existing binary formats (e.g.
binary files like JPEG, ...). If not, you need to read/write these formats
according to their specifications using a binary formatting layer.

In fact, a serialization library should be built on a binary formatting
layer.

Best regards,

-- 
Ares Lagae
Computer Graphics Research Group, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~ares/