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At 12:30 PM -0400 4/16/04, Bob Wyman wrote: > We don't need to be lectured on the fact that working with >binary requires a higher standard of diligence and discipline than >working with text-based encodings. This is obvious. But, just because >it's a bit "harder" doesn't mean it is bad. Bob. You may not need to be lectured on this, but some other people do,as the plethora of software that crashes on unexpected input proves. It has been proposed in this very thread to use binary formats precisely to avoid the overhead of checking for data correctness. Just slam some bits into memory and assume everything is hunky dory. I have seen any number of binary formats that achieve speed gains precisely by doing this. And it is my contention that if this is disallowed (as I think it should be) much, perhaps all, of the speed advantages of these binary formats disappears. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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