Re: [boost] [endian] cooperation with iostream

Subject: Re: [boost] [endian] cooperation with iostream
From: Rutger ter Borg (rutger_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-21 11:13:17

Beman Dawes wrote:
> 
> Not sure I understand the request. Could you explain a bit?
> 

At the moment, the library lets you define big and/or little endian types
directly in your code. Am I also correct that the main motivation of the
library is for IO? 

If that's the case, instead of writing

big64_t my_integer;
my_stream >> my_integer;

I would intuitively prefer setting the endianness to be similar to setting a
property of an iostream,

int my_integer;
my_stream >> big_endian >> my_integer;

because in the first case I am expecting a performance penalty on computing
with the big64_t type, which I am not expecting for the native integer
type. I know there may be no performance penalty at all, it's just what I'm
expecting from the semantics. 

Hopefully this clarifies it a bit,
Kind regards,

Rutger