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Re: little-endian

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On 11/18/12 21:13, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:17:51 +1300, Ian Collins wrote:
>
>> On 11/18/12 11:22, BGB wrote:
>>>> Some more valid criticisms of the hton*/ntoh* functions are that they
>>>> only support one byte order on the "network" side, support only a
>>>> couple of sizes, and only support unsigned values.
>>
>> long long version are a simple extension.
>
> Nope.

Well the machine I'm typing this on has ntohll and htonll.

> It could be middle-endian.

On the wire?

>> The signed or unsigned nature
>> of the type isn't relevant for byte ordering.
>
> How so? Byte ordering is about encoding things into a byte stream. Signed
> integers must be encoded too.

Bytes are bytes, whether they represent a signed or unsigned (or even 
floating point) type is irrelevant.  If it were, there would be a bigger 
common set of byte order reversal functions.

>>> far more common I think is to implement file-readers more like:
>>> int MyFile_ReadInt32LE(FILE *fd)
>>
>> The reason for using the common byte ordering functions is to avoid
>> having to care about the ordering on the wire (or in a file).
>
> There are far more types of objects than unsigned integers. When
> implementing an application protocol on top of some octet or bit stream
> these must be encoded and decoded (serialized/deserialozed) too. There is
> nothing special in unsigned integers.

Did I say there was?

> Usage of functions like hton* should be depreciated unless the protocol
> specification explicitly states that the given unsigned integer object is
> in the "network" format as implemented by hton*.

Which oddly enough, they often are.  The whole point of "network byte 
ordering" is to provide a common standard representation.

> It is always cleaner to provide a fair implementation of the protocol,
> which could be done in a portable way as BGB described. Which is really the
> recommended way. A rare exception might be when you have a library that
> already implements the protocol layer of interest completely.

It's good to know I've been doing things wrong all these years....

-- 
Ian Collins

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little-endian bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-11-15 13:45 -0800
  Re: little-endian JJ <jaejunks@glegooilma-swapit.com> - 2012-11-15 23:33 +0000
  Re: little-endian bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-11-16 10:38 -0800
    Re: little-endian "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-16 23:32 +0100
      Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-16 21:17 -0600
        Re: little-endian "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-17 10:26 +0100
          Re: little-endian "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-11-17 11:38 +0000
            Re: little-endian "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-17 13:56 +0100
              Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-17 11:58 -0600
            Re: little-endian Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-11-17 19:35 +0000
              Re: little-endian "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-11-17 19:50 +0000
          Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-17 11:30 -0600
            Re: little-endian Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 09:28 +1300
              Re: little-endian Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-17 14:48 -0600
                Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-17 16:22 -0600
                Re: little-endian Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 15:17 +1300
                Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-18 09:13 +0100
                Re: little-endian Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 21:33 +1300
                Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-18 10:15 +0100
                Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 03:03 -0600
                Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-18 10:29 +0100
                Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 12:50 -0600
  Re: little-endian Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2012-11-22 04:49 -0800
    Re: little-endian Jongware <jongware@no-spam.plz> - 2012-11-23 15:22 +0100
      Re: little-endian pacman@kosh.dhis.org (Alan Curry) - 2012-11-25 19:39 +0000
        Re: little-endian Jongware <jongware@no-spam.plz> - 2012-11-26 12:01 +0100
          Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-26 14:02 +0100
            Re: little-endian Jongware <jongware@no-spam.plz> - 2012-11-26 15:34 +0100
              Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-26 17:03 +0100
              Re: little-endian Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-26 17:44 -0600
                Re: little-endian Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2012-11-28 23:43 -0800
                Re: little-endian Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-29 22:46 -0600
          Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-26 08:30 -0600
        Re: little-endian Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2012-11-28 23:45 -0800

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