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From: bergquis@nms.gdc.portal.com (Brett Bergquist)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Sending struct through DGRAM socket
Message-ID: <228@wimpy.nms.gdc.portal.com>
Date: 19 Apr 91 23:21:39 GMT
References: <1991Apr18.174104.27409@decuac.dec.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: General DataComm, Middlebury CT
Lines: 19

mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes:
> greg@carnivore.tamu.edu (Greg Economides) writes:
> 
> 	There is no "clean" way to do it - take a look at Sun's XDR
> protocol (if you're on a 386i it should be in your doc kit) and all
> the RPC/XDR goo. Basically, it involves writing a function that will
> convert your structure into a padded, folded, spindled, and mutilated
> format that will transport over the net - and then you decode it on
> the other side.

I am currently using XDR in this fashion to send a structure with embedded
pointers to other structures across an unix pipe.  To do so, I created a
RPCGEN description of the message and used "rpcgen" to create the header
and XDR encoding/decoding module.  I works pretty good, and the RPCGEN
description file makes for good documentation too.-- 
Brett M. Bergquist, Principal Engineer | "Remind me" ... "to write an
General DataComm, Inc.,                | "article on the compulsive reading
Middlebury, CT 06762                   | of news." - Stranger in a Strange Land
Email: bergquis@nms.gdc.portal.com  or ...!portal!gdc!nms!bergquis