Re: mapping data

[Chris Page <address@hidden>]

On Dec 10, 2003, at 09:52, Kimberley Burchett wrote:

> So the question is kind of equivalent to asking whether anybody has 
> done any research into extending the HTTP protocol so that it can 
> explain how to interoperate between TCP/IP and AppleTalk.  I'm not 
> saying it can't be done, just that it may not be a good idea.

Well, Ada has a means to indicate the desired representation of data. 
I’d prefer it if all languages worked that way. You provide an abstract 
description, allowing the implementation to choose the most efficient 
or appropriate representation, and you can optionally specify a 
particular representation for external data.

Today, all the languages I use extensively don’t allow any standard way 
to do that. You either have to write code to slice and dice the data 
across the boundary, or depend on implementation-specific declarations 
(e.g., C #pragma) to define the representation.

-- 
Chris Page - Software Wrangler - palmOne, Inc.

   Dylan + You = Code
   <http://www.gwydiondylan.org/>
   <http://www.cafepress.com/chrispage>