--- In [email protected], "swzoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- In [email protected], "swzoh" <seanzoh@> wrote:
> > The length of the byteblock "xString" always return 263. I became
> > curious why it's not 2*2 or 266:
> >
> > 266 = 272 - 1 - 4 - 1
> >
> > where 1-byte header, 4-byte size as int, 1-byte eos.
> >
> > My conjecture is that the header is not 1-byte, but actually 4-byte.
> > Some kind of Struct Packing arose here, I suppose:
Yup. Sean has chastised me for using a CHAR in a struct.
I'll revise at some point.
But see below.
binary.length, BTW, probably should be called binary.capacity:
it's always the available space in a byteblock.
binary.length (the actual number of real bytes in use in a byteblock)
is neither necessary or feasible, IMO.
-- all the API calls I've run into so far that fill a BYTE array
also return a byte-count, or require a byte-count as an argument:
so the user ASAIK always has a way of knowing how many bytes
have been returned.
-- Furthermore, how can a byteblock know how many of it's bytes are
"real"? There's no magic terminating null. A byteblock doesn't
know whether it's been passed through an API call that's filled
it, so it has no idea how manh of it's bytes matter.
The only a byteblock can know how many of its bytes are real is
if the byteblock's tells it: e.g. some service like
binary.set_length. But doesn't seem much point.
I'll rename binary.length to binary.capacity at some point.
Also: I wonder if all this messing about with byteblocks read and
written straight to variables is a good idea.
Should binary instead return and require handles, like unicode? It
would mean you wouldn't have remember to use the name of a variable,
instead of a variable, in calls to binary. And you could use the
handle.service syntax.
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