[MATRIX-SIG] Possible bug in Numeric LoadArray function

[Konrad Hinsen]

> Well, forgive me for saying the obvious thing, but perhaps the best
> approach is to do the following, assuming that people will be moving
> mostly to similar or identical architectures, but with the occasional
> radical excursion.
> 1.) Define a language for describing numeric representations.  This
>     could be as simple as a bit string, with k bit fields to store
>     the sizes of the various sized integers, a field to store a
>     token to represent the floating point representation, and whatever
>     else needs to be done.

That sounds like a good solution, provided that:
1) This additional information is not too big (it has to be
   added to each array).
2) Such a description language exists or someone is willing
   to invent it (because it doesn't sound trivial).

> I think this is roughly the way DCE or Sun RPC does this.  However, I
> don't know the pickling code, so perhaps it is a silly idea after all.

RPC uses the XDR library, like netCDF and probably others. XDR uses
IEEE format for floats, so it's fast on IEEE machines and slow on
others. That sounds like a good solution to me, since non-IEEE
machines seem to be disappearing, but I am sure this could generate
some flame mails ;-)
-- 
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Konrad Hinsen                          | E-Mail: hinsen@ibs.ibs.fr
Laboratoire de Dynamique Moleculaire   | Tel.: +33-4.76.88.99.28
Institut de Biologie Structurale       | Fax:  +33-4.76.88.54.94
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