News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Type-safe Bitmasks in C++. Parent comment

Re:Type-safe Bitmasks in C++ by kolpa on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @03:40PM (#17306289)
The OP also is not a valid substitution for "most" (by what metric, anyway?) uses of bit packing.

The network wire doesn't need a C++ ABI-compatible object, and clearly isn't portable when communicating between systems running different software.

For transmitting data over network, convert from local format to network format in transit.

> can only be used to save a bytes of memory

Yes, that's what "packing" is for.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Type-safe Bitmasks in C++ by dokem on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @04:24PM (#17306621)
I think you are missing my points. This language feature cannot be used to eg, create a TCP header. It has nothing to do with the C++ ABI. And no, bit packing is not for memory saving, eg MISRA disallows bitpacking for the purpose of space saving.
[ Parent | on HN ]