Re: Network byte order and floating-point numbers

From: Phil Frisbie, Jr. (phil_at_hawksoft.com)
Date: 06/14/04 

Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 20:28:20 GMT

Owen Jacobson wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 17:53:42 +0200, Reinder Verlinde wrote:
>
>
>>In article <pan.2004.06.07.01.35.23.59926@lionsanctuary.net>,
>> Owen Jacobson <angstrom@lionsanctuary.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>the actual protocol is based on sending struct{...}s over the connection.
>>
>>If you mean that you write sizeof( aStruct) bytes, passing a pointer to
>>aStruct: that is not even portable between equal-endian systems.
>>Different systems, compilers or even compiler settings will lead to
>>different padding inside structures.
>
> I'm well aware of that. Unfortunately, the guys involved in writing the
> server half of the application are very much Windows people, where this is
> normal behaviour and even works reasonably well (between Windows machines).

Yes, WinTel programmers tend to ignore potential problems like that, but it is
STILL not good programming practice. I have seen Windows only programs get
toasted because the structure alignment setting was inadvertently changed and
all of the sudden structures sent between different versions were garbled ;) 

-- 
Phil Frisbie, Jr.
Hawk Software
http://www.hawksoft.com

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