[boost] [endian] endian flip and endian domain

Subject: [boost] [endian] endian flip and endian domain
From: vicente.botet (vicente.botet_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-06-07 18:53:26

Hi,

I think that I have found a good name that can be used instead of the swap_in_place: "flip". This recall the flip operation used in bitset exchanging the value of a bit. On the endian context this will exchange in place the endianess of a data from/to the native endianess.

As the same data can be used with different endianess depending of the the context,  the flip function  needs a specific parameter, let me call this the endian domain. As the data to flip can containg part that are big and others that are little endian, we need to map all the leaveds of the tree associated to the data structure. The domain mill map staticaly the data to its endianess. For fundamental types this will be reduced to a single endian value, but for structures, the map will be a tree having as leaves endian types. 

This mapping allows us to separate the endian concern from the data itself in a clear way. For structures that have been adapted as fusion sequences, we can define flip_to/from functions that will do the the flip in a generic way. Of course the user could always overload the flips functions to provide its own implementation.

I have started to play with this, and even if I'm not a metaprogramming expert, I have reached to have a prototype implementation that I need to polish a little bit more, before I share it with you. I will need your help later to make it much more elegant.

Anyway, let me know what do you think of this design.

Best,
_____________________
Vicente Juan Botet Escribá
http://viboes.blogspot.com/