The advantage of writing the length is that a parser can skip the entire sub-message easily without having to parse its contents. Otherwise, we would probably use the "group" encoding for sub-messages, where a special end tag marks the end of the message.
On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 9:06 AM, etorri <e...@torri.be> wrote: > > > Hello, > > The "length delimited" encoding basically tells that the following N > bytes belong to this field. Wouldn't it be easier to instead use the > number of elements that belong to the embedded message (repeated > element). > > Now (as far as I have understood) the message needs to be built from > fragments and then collected together as the lengths are not known > beforehand and it would be expensive to calculate the byte-length of > the embedded message. > > Instead, it would be relatively inexpensive to calculate just the > number of following elements that make the embedded message before > starting to encode it. > > This would enable streaming of PB or encoding and sending the elements > right as they are encoded. > > Sorry if I misunderstood something. I have just started looking at BP. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Protocol Buffers" group. To post to this group, send email to protobuf@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to protobuf+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/protobuf?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
