| Re: Possible Mac OS Bug with FIX. [message #44021 is a reply to message #44020] |
Wed, 11 May 2005 12:56   |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
|
Senior Member |
|
|
David Fanning writes:
> Kenneth Bowman writes:
>
>> Since these statements are running on the same machine, why would endianess
>> matter? (Not a rhetorical question ... just confused like David.)
>
> Well, thank you! This is the dilemma in a nutshell.
>
> You have a string of bytes, sequentially numbered, obviously.
> If you are asked to read two of those sequential bytes and make
> it an integer, wouldn't you expect the FIX programmer to treat
> the first byte as the "lowest" bits (first in time, I guess)
> and the second byte as the "highest" bits (next in time).
> Then, depending upon which machine you are running on,
> you would put the "lowest" bits first or second, depending
> on endianess (is that a word?).
>
> That obviously makes it an RSI problem. Or, would RSI say
> I don't know what the hell you are thinking, YOU figure it
> out?
>
> I'd like to know before I place the phone call. :-)
After thinking about it some more, I still think it
is the IDL programmer's job to know what he is doing.
You don't know where the bytes came from. (And what is the
endian nature of the machine *creating* the bytes. Oh, Lord,
do I have to worry about that, too!?)
Obviously, there are too many unanswered questions to expect
RSI to figure it out for you. If you are doing something like
this, I think the onus must be on you to figure it out.
What I am still not clear about, however, is whether whatever
the hell it is that RSI is doing is done *consistently*
across all machine architectures. Anyone have a theory about
that? :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
