[issue1749662] New byte packing format for the struct module

[Mark Dickinson]

Mark Dickinson <dickinsm at gmail.com> added the comment:

Is this still of interest to anyone?

What's the motivation for this particular choice (bigendian byteorder, native size, native alignment), out of all the various other choices that aren't currently implemented?

PEP 3118 also proposes the addition of a new format, '^', for (native byteorder, native size, no alignment).

There are 12 possible different formats (big/little/native byteorder * standard/native size * none/native padding), of which 4 are currently implemented (native**3, big*standard*none, little*standard*none, native*standard*none).  Of the 8 missing formats, it's not clear to me why either of the new proposed formats should be a particular target.

BTW, not that it really matters, but I've earmarked '$' for a different use, so I'm mildly opposed to its use here.

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nosy: +minge

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