Re: Cross-platform issues

[Leslie <jlturriff@centurytel.net>]

John B. Matthews wrote:

> In article <hfeive$315$1@news.albasani.net>,
>  Leslie <jlturriff@centurytel.net> wrote:
> 
>> I'm working on an application that I would like to be capable
>> of communicating between hosts, and I wonder how the issue of
>> 32-bit vs. 64-bit, and perhaps endianness should best be
>> handled?
> 
> I'm guessing that would depend on how much and what kind of
> data, as well as a given compiler's support for representation.
> Here's an example of one vendor's documentation of this:
> 
>
<http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.4/gnat_rm/Representation-Clauses-a
> nd-Pragmas.html#Representation-Clauses-and-Pragmas>
> 
> Another approach is to avoid such problems altogether by using
> Ada Web Server (AWS) and defining all communication atop HTTP:
> 
> <http://libre.adacore.com/libre/tools/aws/>
> 
        What I'm working on is a product that I want to conform as
closely as possible to the one that inspired it.  The original
emits trace data with things like field length info in 4-byte 
integers, for example. I suppose that using a derived type to
ensure that in my implementation those fields conform with the
original is one way to do it, but is that accepted practice, or
is there a more usual one?

        BTW, I'm just getting into Ada, and the only books I have for
reference were from the early 90s, so at this point my ideas on
how to proceed are a bit vague. :-)

Leslie