Re: Serialization library, request for feedback

From	Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: Serialization library, request for feedback
Date	2012-12-14 14:25 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<kafcsn$oda$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<b844e42c-1367-4708-9ee9-f79dca0c8516@r14g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>

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Ulf Åström wrote:

> I'm wondering if there is anything crucial I have missed. It can deal
> with most primitive C types, strings, arrays and almost any
> arrangement of linked structures. There are still a few pieces
> missing; for example I would like to have a clean interface to let the
> user provide custom read/write functions for complex data types. I
> will also work on the type safety, so structures can't be linked
> incorrectly by erroneous or malicious input.

I believe that's a poor approach to a common problem which also has a very 
common and simple solution:  for the output, a single custom 
operator/function that takes in a data type/struct and calls fprintf() to 
dump the relevant text following a specific data format, and for the input, 
a custom parser.  That's it.  No need to complicate things.

The "let's blindly dump everything" approach is fundamentally broken, 
because it actually doesn't describe the information.  Instead, it dumps the 
data as how it was stored in a particular data structure and omits any 
semantics associated with it.  This causes significant problems, because it 
doesn't perform any integrity checks on the information and essentially 
eliminates the possibility of adding the necessary sanity checks 
to the parsing process, other than testing if a particular primitive data 
type is actually valid.  Therefore, dumping data makes it impossible to test 
if the data which has been imported actually represents valid information.  
And this is a bad thing.

The snags you've stumbled on are a natural consequence of trying to dump 
data instead of exporting information, which happen to be trivial to fix 
with the parser/document dump combo approach.  Complex data types are never 
a problem because the programmer is responsible to write the necessary I/O 
routines, and all the necessary sanity checks are automatically performed, 
not only with regards to type safety but also in the form of semantics 
checks, including the ability to infer if a problem is fatal or recoverable.

Rui Maciel

Thread

Serialization library, request for feedback Ulf Åström <ulf.astrom@gmail.com> - 2012-12-13 13:46 -0800
  Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2012-12-13 13:57 -0800
    Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ulf Åström <ulf.astrom@gmail.com> - 2012-12-13 14:30 -0800
      Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 19:38 +1300
        Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 03:47 -0600
          Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 23:23 +1300
            Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 11:29 -0600
          Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ulf Åström <ulf.astrom@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 03:51 -0800
            Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 12:02 -0600
        Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-12-14 12:18 +0000
          Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 14:27 +0000
            Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-12-14 15:22 +0000
              Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 13:00 -0600
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Greg Martin <greg@softsprocket.com> - 2012-12-14 11:58 -0800
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 15:08 -0600
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2012-12-14 20:07 -0800
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-16 03:49 -0800
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-16 13:17 -0600
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Greg Martin <greg@softsprocket.com> - 2012-12-17 09:07 -0800
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-17 13:25 -0600
              Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-15 09:23 +1300
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2012-12-14 15:31 -0500
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 15:26 -0600
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-15 12:25 +1300
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 18:41 -0600
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-15 14:56 +1300
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 23:36 -0600
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-15 20:13 +1300
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Shao Miller <sha0.miller@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 21:42 -0500
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 23:47 -0600
              Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 21:12 +0000
                Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Johann Klammer <klammerj@NOSPAM.a1.net> - 2012-12-15 05:06 +0100
    Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Willem <willem@turtle.stack.nl> - 2012-12-14 22:20 +0000
  Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-12-13 23:11 +0000
    Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ulf Åström <ulf.astrom@gmail.com> - 2012-12-13 15:57 -0800
      Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-12-14 02:53 +0000
        Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ulf Åström <ulf.astrom@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 04:25 -0800
      Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Bart van Ingen Schenau <bart@ingen.ddns.info.invalid> - 2012-12-14 08:04 +0000
  Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 14:25 +0000
    Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 13:58 -0600
      Re: Serialization library, request for feedback "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-12-14 20:44 +0000
        Re: Serialization library, request for feedback BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-12-14 16:58 -0600
        Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Ulf Åström <ulf.astrom@gmail.com> - 2012-12-14 17:39 -0800
    Re: Serialization library, request for feedback Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2012-12-14 14:19 -0800

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