[clisp-list] Re: byte sex

[Sam S. <sd...@gn...>]

> * Bruno Haible <oe...@py...t> [2004-11-08 14:33:09 +0100]:
>
>>> so there should be a mean to specify
>>> the endianness with :EXTERNAL-FORMAT.
>
> You would gain nothing. There is no specification of the bit-by-bit
> format of a stream of `(UNSIGNED-BYTE ,n) or `(SIGNED-BYTE ,n)
> integers that a CL implementation can produce. Therefore you cannot
> read such a file in a different CL implementation than the one that
> produced it. And you can already read it in the same CL
> implementation.

De jure, yes.
De facto, I bet all CLs use the IEEE format in either the host byte
order or some fixed byte order (either little-endian, like CLISP, or
big-endian), so I see no harm in enabling CLISP to read all their files.

> ANSI CL says that "The external-format is meaningful for any kind of
> file stream whose element type is a subtype of character." You see,
> it's not meant for binary I/O.

So?  We can do better, can't we?

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running w2k
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