On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 9:25 AM Antoine Pitrou <solip...@pitrou.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:12:21 -0600
> Wes McKinney <wesmck...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 8:52 AM Antoine Pitrou <anto...@python.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > The spec has the following language about union type ids:
> > > """
> > > Types buffer: A buffer of 8-bit signed integers. Each type in the union
> > > has a corresponding type id whose values are found in this buffer. A
> > > union with more than 127 possible types can be modeled as a union of 
> > > unions.
> > > """
> > > https://arrow.apache.org/docs/format/Columnar.html#union-layout
> > >
> > > However, in several places the C++ code assumes type ids are unsigned.
> > > Java doesn't seem to implement type ids (and there is no integration
> > > task for union types).
> > >
> > > In the flatbuffers description, the type ids array is modeled as an
> > > array of signed 32-bit integers.
> > >
> > > Moreover, according to the language above, type ids should be restricted
> > > to the [0, 127] interval?  Which one should it be?
> >
> > The (optional) type ids in the metadata provide a correspondence
> > between the union types / children and the values found in the types
> > buffer (data). As stated in the spec, the types buffer are 8-bit
> > signed integers. As I recall the reason that we used [ Int ] in the
> > metadata was that the Int type is thought to be easier for languages
> > to work with in general when serializing/deserializing the metadata.
>
> Ok, but is there a reason the C++ code uses `std::vector<uint8_t>` for
> the type codes?

Oversight on my part. Suggest we change to int8_t

> Regards
>
> Antoine.
>
>

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