On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 06:57, Andrew Coppin <andrewcop...@btinternet.com>wrote:
> On 26/08/2011 10:51 PM, Steve Schafer wrote: > >> On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:30:02 +0100, you wrote: >> >>> You wouldn't want to know how many bits you need to store on disk to >>> reliably recreate the value? >>> >> >> I can't say that I have cared about that sort of thing in a very long >> time. Bits are rather cheap these days. I store data on disk, and the >> space it occupies is whatever it is; I don't worry about it. >> > > I meant if you're trying to *implement* serialisation. The Bits class > allows you to access bits one by one, but surely you'd want some way to know > how many bits you need to keep? > I think that falls into the realm of protocol design; if you're doing it in your program at runtime, you're probably doing it wrong. (The fixed size version makes sense for marshaling; it's *dynamic* sizes that need to be thought out beforehand.) -- brandon s allbery allber...@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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