Re: [boost] [endian] Some suggestions

Subject: Re: [boost] [endian] Some suggestions
From: Bjorn Reese (breese_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-04-12 11:49:20

On 04/12/2016 04:51 PM, Peter Dimov wrote:
> Bjorn Reese wrote:
>
>> While the interoperability problems surrounding NaN payloads are
>> caused by serialization, ...
>
> I'm not sure that this is true. If the sender and the receiver are both
> IEEE, the serialization and the deserialization cannot be the source of
> interoperability problems because they just transfer the bits from point
> A to point B.

The purpose of serialization is to transform values between C++ types
and types defined by a serialization protocol. If the protocol designer
opts for IEEE 754 floats, then the protocol should specify all aspects
that IEEE 754 does not; this includes endianness and the semantics of
NaN payloads.