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On Monday 09 December 2002 18:49, Sean McGrath wrote: > 2. The amount of concrete shared datatypes that can be enshrined > without getting into platform/application specific datatypes is > low. I would disagree; the set of datatypes in ASN.1 was designed to be platform independent. I mean, the concept of an integer is platform independent. A 32-bit signed integer like 'int' is getting a bit platform specific, although most platforms can manage that these days. So in ASN.1 you don't have types like 'int' 'long' 'double' and so on, you have types like INTEGER which is an arbitrary precision integer. You can limit it to a fixed range if you want, but there is no inbuilt 'integer between the seemingly arbitrary -2^31-1 and +2^31'. For floating point you specify how many digits or bits (you choose) of exponent and mantissa you want, but without limits they are arbitrary length. By 'arbitrary length' we mean the same way that strings are arbitrary length, mmmkay? And before anyone says that 'arbitrary length' won't be interoperable, it is interoperable as long as the recipient has enough memory to store them, and if that may be a problem then you specify limits in your schema; XML has the same situation with string types and entity expansion and so on, so don't knock 'arbitrary length'! > > regards, > Sean > ABS -- A city is like a large, complex, rabbit - ARP
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