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From: Richard D Riehle <LaoXhai@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Big-endian vs little-endian
Date: 1999/02/04
Message-ID: <79ct1p$7oe@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 440701252
References: <36B155D2.2E8573BB@wvu.edu> <7982p9$nll$3@plug.news.pipex.net>
Organization: Netcom
X-NETCOM-Date: Thu Feb 04  1:39:37 PM CST 1999
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-02-04T13:39:37-06:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <7982p9$nll$3@plug.news.pipex.net>,
	"Nick Roberts" <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> wrote:

>I can think of two possible solutions:
>
>(a) [ snipped >

>(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: 

 The Text_IO solution is especially useful when converting floating point
 from one machine to floating point on another.  For example, where is the
 sign bit on a VAX 32 floating point number?  You'd be surprised!  We were
 converting VAX floating point to IBM mainframe floating point.  People 
 came up with all sorts of algorithmic solutions.  The best solution was
 to write the VAX numbers to a text file and read the text file back to
 to the IBM.  No fuss. No muss. No algorithmic gymnastics.  

 Richard Riehle
 richard@adaworks.com
 http://www.adaworks.com