On 29 Oct 2015, at 6:09pm, Jason H <jhihn at gmx.com> wrote: > This seems to be at odds with my understanding of "2.1 Record Format" of the > document. Given that it reads the row varint, which contains the length of > itself and the serial types of the columns, in order, it should be completely > able to skip the reading of unneeded columns. If I have 39,39,39 as my header > (excepting the length of header) I know I am dealing with 3 text columns of > 13 bytes each. If I want only the last column, I can then seek(78), read(26). > At no time did I need to read the prior two columns.
You're right. I explained it wrong. You only need to read the serial type of the preceding columns. You don't need to read past the contents. But you do need to read and interpret the serial types for all columns 1 to 4 in order to know where column 5 starts. There's no indication that says "column 5 starts at byte 1828.". Thanks for checking and not just believing me. Simon.
