Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!ken
From: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.isis
Subject: message format wish list
Message-ID: <32957@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 6 Oct 89 16:00:40 GMT
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: ken@cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 15


Here's what I have so far:

1) Include real support for %f, %g formats (probably IEEE standard only)
2) Arrange to have data fields aligned on 8-byte boundaries so that
   msg_get formats like %-G don't risk an alignment error on reception side
3) Add some sort of %- format on send, in which the message picks up a
   pointer (e.g. to a huge data array) rather than copying
4) Support an inline structure declaration: {%d,%d,%f...} (padding?)

I think I can do everything; would probably deal with the padding issue
in (4) by giving an error message on the reception side if it doesn't
seem to match up correctly.

Ken