Hello,
In Flatbuffers, all fields are optional by default. It means that the reader can get NULL (in C++) for a missing field. In turn, this means that message validation (at least in C++) should check all child table fields for non-NULL. Not only is this burdensome, but it's easy to miss some checks. Currently, we don't seem to do any of them. Instead, it seems we could mark most child fields *required*. This would allow the generated verifier to check that those fields are indeed non-NULL when reading. It would also potentially break compatibility, though I'm not sure why (do people rely on the fields being missing sometimes?). What do you think? To quote the Flatbuffers documentation: """ By default, all fields are optional, i.e. may be left out. This is desirable, as it helps with forwards/backwards compatibility, and flexibility of data structures. It is also a burden on the reading code, since for non-scalar fields it requires you to check against NULL and take appropriate action. By specifying this field, you force code that constructs FlatBuffers to ensure this field is initialized, so the reading code may access it directly, without checking for NULL. If the constructing code does not initialize this field, they will get an assert, and also the verifier will fail on buffers that have missing required fields. """ https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/md__schemas.html Regards Antoine.
