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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,febd9e55846c9556 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-03-05 14:03:06 PST Message-ID: <3E667323.8090203@cogeco.ca> From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Endianness independance References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:58:59 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.47.195 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1046901539 198.96.47.195 (Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:58:59 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:58:59 EST Organization: Bell Sympatico Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!cyclone.bc.net!torn!webster!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:34941 Date: 2003-03-05T16:58:59-05:00 List-Id: Simon Wright wrote: > "David C. Hoos" writes: >>Agreed. However, at the end of the day, there is no solution at all >>for communication between machines with differing ranges for the >>exponent and mantissa, so the notion of platform independence must >>have certain caveats about some details of the platforms which must >>at least support some level of commonality. > > No _general_ solution, but a limited solution is possible surely? Certainly. At worst comes to worst, you can convert a value to an exponential string format and exchange that. The XDR network format was designed to be a bit more efficient than that however, which is the only reason it is perhaps superior than string form. -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg