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Postings from September 2000
Michael G Schwern wrote:
> RFC 142 may help out existing un/pack users, but does nothing to help
> in the understanding of un/pack by native speakers of Perl.
>
> I'm starting to think this is largely a documentation issue.
The existing documentation of pack/unpack is terse, and assumes a knowledge of
"other language" data layouts. I think everyone can agree on that.
The need for pack/unpack is mostly to coexist with those other languages' data
structures.
If you know the other language, pack/unpack becomes less obscure. If you don't,
it doesn't. So maybe a good part of that is a documentation issue.
Another use of pack/unpack could be to [re]store Perl data in binary form, which
can sometimes be smaller than ASCII form (source that can be eval'd). For this
purpose, non-other-language-knowledge documentation would be extremely helpful.
--
Glenn
=====
Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
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