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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: AI12-0218: What is the portable representation clause for
 processing IETF packets on little-endian machines?
Date: Thu, 10 May 2018 15:44:11 -0700
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Date: 2018-05-10T15:44:11-07:00
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"Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net> writes:
> Serialization?  LoL!!  Streamed field-by-field (even textual?)
> serialization like OO designs do?

Serialization just means representing a data structure as a series of
bytes.  Some languages can do it automatically by reflection on the
datatype description, giving a convenient representation for exchanging
those objects with another program written in the same language.  In the
case of an IP packet you'd write the serialization code yourself so that
the representation would be packet format sent over the wire.

> LoL!!  Oh, so an IC manufacturer doesn't want to sell their chips to
> both big-endian and little-endian accounts?  Or is it that the IC
> manufacturer wants to write entirely different source code for
> different processors?

Do you write any actual programs, bro?  To switch between big and little
endian processors in C you change a #ifdef to redefine some byte
swapping macros, not write entirely different source code.  Here:

   https://linux.die.net/man/3/byteorder

It's inconceivable to me that Ada networking programs don't do something
similar.