Theoretically, we do have a list now. I'm going to try using it. It's
also a personal experiment, since I'm subscribed to 'all', but not to
'language'.
I've already thrown a few notes together for a perl5 module, but nothing
I'm ready to share just yet. I need to dig through CPAN to make sure
I'm not reinventing something.
I hadn't even considered doing a 'partial' unpack. It would seem to be
quite inefficent to me. Just go ahead and unpack it right up front, and
then repack it when the user asks for a packed version of the data.
I like the idea of having non-rigid data elements, but I'm doubtful
about a generic enough method to support the various possible formats.
(Of course, I'm already considering methods to handle the more complex
entities, such as nested descriptions.)
Glenn Linderman wrote:
> The Win32 low-level security APIs probably have the most
> complex parameters of APIs I've run across recently, if you want to see some
> "real" examples.
Not if I can help it! I've run into some fairly complex binary data
structures before. (Working on store&forward fax switches. In that
case, we not only had <length><varlengthstring>, but also
<countofstructs>, <length><offset>, <length><offset>, ...,
<varlengthstring>, <varlengthstring>, ...
In some of the cases, the variable length portions were nested within
each other, recursively.
Honestly, if you're dealing with something that complex, perhaps writing
C code or something is a better idea. Still, we can give it a look!
Edwin
