From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,cec65b0a3ccd802d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Mark A Biggar Subject: Re: Big-endian vs little-endian Date: 1999/02/03 Message-ID: <36B89411.7A6CFA14@lmco.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 440273298 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <36B155D2.2E8573BB@wvu.edu> <7982p9$nll$3@plug.news.pipex.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Lockheed Martin Western Development Labs Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-02-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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