Re: [boost] [endian] Some suggestions

Subject: Re: [boost] [endian] Some suggestions
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-04-13 08:30:09

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 7:19 AM, Peter Dimov <lists_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Beman Dawes wrote:
>
> But to follow the same pattern as the conversion functions, the interface
>> would look like this:
>>
>>          float endian_reverse(float x) noexcept;
>>
>> but like you and whoever raised the issue originally, I don't want to bet
>> on that working.
>>
>
> Passing an arbitrary sequence of bytes by value should in principle be
> avoided even for int because of trap representations, so adding float
> support may provide the motivation to fix that as well.
>
> The correct type of a wrong-endian-int or a wrong-endian-float is unsigned
> char[sizeof(int)] or unsigned char[sizeof(float)], not int or float.

Agreed.

The traditional conversion approach of passing and returning an int or
whatever is essentially an undiscriminated union:

union here_be_dragons
{
    int  maybe_this;
    unsigned char[4]   or_maybe_this;
};

Maybe the endian conversion functions should stop perpetuating such
insanity.

--Beman