On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 02:01:35PM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> At 02:01 PM 3/2/2001 -0500, wiz wrote:
> > > =item BINARY (0)
> > > =item ASCII (1)
> > > =item EBCDIC (2)
> > > =item UTF_8 (3)
> > > =item UTF_32 (4)
> > > =item NATIVE_1 (5) through NATIVE_3 (7)
> >
> >A little more complex, but why not use bits 3-7 as actual flags:
> >7|6|5|4|3|2|1|0
> >0 0 0 0 1 x x x = UTF && UTF_8
> >0 0 0 1 1 x x x = UTF && UTF_32
> >x x 1 0 1 x x x = UTF && UTF_ALT_1 thru UTF_ALT_7
> >x x 1 0 0 x x x = !UTF && NATIVE_1 thru NATIVE_7
> >This gives future options if needed.
>
> And uses lots of flag bits. :( I had considered something like it, but I'm
> loathe to snag lots of bits to start, and I'm not sure expanding it out
> really buys us anything in terms of speed. If that turns out to be wrong,
> I'm all for changing it.
At the risk of contagious MACRO-itis might it be an idea to define clear
macros to get this information out? That way it is possible to change the
underlying representation from something packed to unpacked whenever it
seems appropriate without breaking anything that plays by the rules.
Nicholas Clark
