Re: Endian-specific types

Mouse <[email protected]> Mon, 11 Apr 2016 15:46:00 -0400 (EDT)
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.devel.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>> It uses __le16, what should I convert that to in NetBSD?
> What does it do?

I _think_ __le16 is just uint16 (or maybe int16) but with an additional
annotation for humans and (potentially?) automated codewalkers that the
value is thought of as little-endian.

I have never really understood their use of it.  IMO values in
integer-typed variables should not even conceptually have endiannesses;
endianness is a property of not the variable or its value but rather of
a serialization of that value.  Confusing a value with its
serialization is a fruitful source of bugs - I'm working with some code
right now at work that does the "overlay values onto the buffer to
serialize/deserialize" thing and it is byte sex hell, for exactly this
reason.  (I've been recommending they fix the code to stop doing that.)

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		[email protected]
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B