Re: [Boost-users] cross-platfrom binary serialization?

From: Frank Mori Hess (frank.hess_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-29 14:00:07

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On Friday 29 August 2008 01:42 am, Rainer Deyke wrote:
> Johan Råde wrote:
> > I see three options for dealing with the endianness issue:
> > 1. make all archives big-endian
> > 2. make all archives little-endian
> > 3. use the native format when saving, and put an endianness flag in the
> > archive.
> >
> > 1 is inefficient when moving data between little-endian platforms
> > 2 is inefficient when moving data between big-endian platforms
> > So 3 should be most efficient. Is there an easy way of storing an
> > endianness-flag in an archive?
>
> I don't think performance should be the overriding concern, especially
> since byte-shuffling is very fast.  The problem with option 3 is that it
> introduces a potential source of bugs that only manifests when moving
> between platforms with different endianness.  I'd prefer option 1,
> precisely because it requires shuffling on the most common platforms so
> any bugs in the shuffling code are sure to be caught early.

Why are you guys not just using XDR for your portable binary format?
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