[Haskell-cafe] Data.Binary Endianness

[Jules Bean]

Ketil Malde wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-09-11 at 12:01 +0100, Jules Bean wrote:
> 
>>> How can the format be portable if the representation isn't unambigously
>>> defined?  And if it is unabmigously defined, what's wrong with using it
>>> for externally defined data formats?
> 
>> It's portable because it works on other machines also running that exact 
>> version of Data.Binary, regardless of their CPU architecture (in 
>> particular, word size or endianness). That is the precise sense of 
>> 'portable' used here.
> 
> Okay.  Data.Binary is not for persistence, then (since the format may
> change between versions of the library, and presumably between different
> compilers/RTS), but merely for transient serializing, as over a network
> connection.

I probably came over stronger than I intended. It is intended for 
persistence, too. My point is that, should a bug be discovered in 
Data.Binary, the maintainers may be forced to change the format and 
there is no mechanism in place for coping with that.

>