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NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 05:21:47 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: pragma Pack does not work on GNAT 5.01a for Redhat Linux.
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From: Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen
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Date: 29 Jun 2007 12:21:46 +0200
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Date: 2007-06-29T12:21:46+02:00
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>>>>> "SW" == Simon Wright <simon.j.wright@mac.com> writes:

    SW> "Bob Spooner" <rls19@psu.edu> writes:
    >> "Simon Wright" <simon.j.wright@mac.com> wrote in message 
    >> news:m2hcp2e4fv.fsf@mac.com...
    >>> 
    >>> There's always a price to pay, of course; the packing isn't dense, and
    >>> it can be quite a challenge to work out what bytes are actually being
    >>> sent (eg, if you find yourself having to talk to C after all).
    >> 
    >> Yes, XDR takes care of things like endianness, etc. that otherwise get in 
    >> the way, but as you point out, there's always a price to be paid for 
    >> generality. In some cases it looks like it even will take care of differing 
    >> floating point representations, although I wonder about out of range 
    >> problems when converting. Isn't there an XDR library for C? I know that 
    >> there is one for Fortran. I would think that as long as you have an XDR 
    >> library for the language with which you need to communicate, you wouldn't 
    >> have to decode the bytes yourself; or have I misunderstood what you are 
    >> saying?

C has had XDR and RPC at least since 1987. Try man xdr or man rpcgen on any unix
box. 

See

[Sun Microsystems
XDR: External Data Representation Standard
Internet Network Working Group
RFC1014 Internet Request For Comments, June 1987]

-- 
   C++: The power, elegance and simplicity of a hand grenade.