>Dirk Gerrits wrote: >IIRC the old persistance library defined facilities for input and output >using the RFC-1014 XDR: External Data Representation Standard. The new >serialization library doesn't seem to include such archive classes and >leaves it up to the user to write these.
>Now I don't mean to dispute the decision, but I'd just like to know what >the rationale for it was. Well, I've been busy. Seriously, I personally had no interest in implementing XDR. a) It didn't add any more portability than using a text file. b) using a text stream permited standard library code to address the mapping between machines - for free and guaranteed correct c) In my opinion wouldn't be any faster Of course all sorts of objects were raised to these views. Worse, everyone wanted their own pet archive format. So I did the natural thing - I punted. The data storage is completelty factored out. I'm waiting for any one of those who told me how easy it is to make a portable XDR archiver to submit a derivation of basic_[i|o]archive. This factoring out actually is a great thing. The data storage itself doesn't even have to be a stream like object. It could be something more interesting like an pipe to another machine or what ever. Robert Ramey _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost