<div dir="ltr">On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 06:57, Andrew Coppin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:andrewcoppin@btinternet.com">andrewcoppin@btinternet.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On 26/08/2011 10:51 PM, Steve Schafer wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:30:02 +0100, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
You wouldn't want to know how many bits you need to store on disk to<br>
reliably recreate the value?<br>
</blockquote>
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I can't say that I have cared about that sort of thing in a very long<br>
time. Bits are rather cheap these days. I store data on disk, and the<br>
space it occupies is whatever it is; I don't worry about it.<br>
</blockquote>
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I meant if you're trying to *implement* serialisation. The Bits class allows you to access bits one by one, but surely you'd want some way to know how many bits you need to keep?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>
I think that falls into the realm of protocol design; if you're doing it in your program at runtime, you're probably doing it wrong. (The fixed size version makes sense for marshaling; it's *dynamic* sizes that need to be thought out beforehand.)</div>
<div><br></div></div>-- <br>brandon s allbery <a href="mailto:allbery.b@gmail.com" target="_blank">allbery.b@gmail.com</a><br>wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms<br>
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