From: Mark A Biggar <mark.a.biggar@lmco.com>
Subject: Re: Big-endian vs little-endian
Date: 1999/02/03
Date: 1999-02-03T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <36B89411.7A6CFA14@lmco.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 7982p9$nll$3@plug.news.pipex.net
Nick Roberts wrote:
> (b) use Text_IO instead of Sequential_IO, and input and output the data in
> the form of text.
>
> The advantage of (b) is that text is the most universal data format: non-Ada
> programs will (almost always) be able to use the data (if that's what you
> might ever require). The disadvantage is that the text uses up more storage
> than its equivalent binary form. How much data do you have?
umm.. How many times have you actually coded this up both ways and compared.
Almost every time I have tried this the text version of the data was smaller
then the binary version, especially if you have variable sized data. The
only cases where the text was bigger envolved data that consisted of large
amounts of high percession floats and even then the text was only about twice
as big. Even then, usually the advantages of portablility and human readablity
of the text format outweigh the small space savings of binary data formats.
--
Mark Biggar
mark.a.biggar@lmco.com
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1999-02-03 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1999-01-29 0:00 Big-endian vs little-endian Mike Werner
1999-02-02 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-02-03 0:00 ` Mark A Biggar [this message]
1999-02-06 0:00 ` Samuel T. Harris
1999-02-08 0:00 ` dennison
1999-02-08 0:00 ` Samuel T. Harris
1999-02-04 0:00 ` Richard D Riehle
1999-02-06 0:00 ` Mike Werner
1999-02-07 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1999-02-09 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1999-02-10 0:00 ` Mike Werner
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