Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Feature suggestion: "tla inventory -0"

[Andrew Suffield]

On Thu, Dec 25, 2003 at 12:27:17PM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
> Without wishing to start YAXFW, there is an unsolved need for a more
> general, more flexible exchange format between tools.  A small core
> set of data types which is extensible, a read and write syntax for
> those, etc.  Of course the most obvious choice here is s-expressions.
> 
> So that's another way to go: to form a plan mostly around generalized
> and language-independent s-exps instead of simple
> records-of-string(punning-as-number)-fields.  
> 
> The two forks aren't necessarily incompatible: fully-general
> records-of-string-fields could perhaps be defined just as a
> specialized syntax for a subset of s-exps.

Careful. s-exps may make more sense than tagged strings, but they're
still a solution in search of a problem. Do you *really* need your
inter-tool data format to be directly human readable? Doing that
imposes a hefty performance hit, even if it doesn't matter in trivial
scenarios.

A good IPC protocol is easy to parse in raw C (*no* libraries) and
requires minimal verification - it is frequently easy to create a
domain-specific protocol that is simply unable to express invalid
data.

I'm not convinced it's worthwhile though. There isn't a need for
arbitrary unrelated tools to exchange data.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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