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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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