[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANN: A triple of new packages for talking tothe outside world

[Achim Schneider]

"David Roundy" <daveroundy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 9, 2008 10:10 AM, Dominic Steinitz
> <dominic.steinitz at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> > Duncan Coutts <duncan.coutts <at> worc.ox.ac.uk> writes:
> > > The difficulty is in deciding what the api should be. Does it
> > > give you a real bitstream or only a byte aligned one? If I ask
> > > for 3 bits then 15 bytes what does it do? Does it assume I meant
> > > 3 bits, then pad to the next byte boundary and get 15 bytes, or
> > > does it mean get 15 bytes but at this 3 bit shift offset?
> >
> > I'd suggest an aligned and unaligned api.
> >
> > So the aligned api would get 3 bits and the 15 bytes would start
> > from the next byte boundary.
> >
> > The unaligned api would get 3 bits and the 15 bytes (=15 x 8 bits)
> > would finish still with an offset of 3.
> 
> Do you mean we'd have an unalignedGetBytes as well as getBytes (which
> would remain aligned)? That would make sense, but it would seem a bit
> heavy to duplicate all of the binary API.
> 
getBytes per default unaligned and additionally snapToNextByte?


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