[erlang-questions] Writing platform independent Socket based binary parsing code

[Arun Muralidharan]

Aha...you have hit the point.. I really wish something like this was
explicitly mentioned :) (unless I have missed it).

Thanks a lot Dmitry.

Regards,
Arun


On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 3:20 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov
<dmkolesnikov@REDACTED>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> There are no needs for ntohs functions in erlang. Binary matching does the
> job and you should keep in-mind that by default it assumes "network byte
> order" ~ big-endian
> So, like you've wrote you parse data through binary match
> <<Version:32, _Rest/binary>> = Data  "big-unsigned" can be skipped (it is
> assumed  by default)
>
> - Dmitry
>
> On May 12, 2012, at 12:13 PM, Arun Muralidharan wrote:
>
> Thanks Dmitry for the quick response.
> I am aware of the fact that from network we get data in our application in
> Big Endian format and in c/c++ I would use ntohs/ntohl functions for
> converting it into a format that the OS supports.
> But, the same in Erlang is confusing me (no idea why !!).
> As per your last statement *"So, the parsing of protocol primitive shall
> not be dependent on CPU architecture. E.g. If you protocol say that version
> is serialized into big-endian then your parsing code shall be same and it
> is platform independent. "     *do you want to say that, as I am parsing
> data from network socket I should use  "<<Version :
> 4/big-unsigned-integer:8,_Rest/binary>> = Sock_Data." as the data in
> network is serialized in big endian format ?
>
> Really sorry if I am sounding naive..but somehow i am having trouble
> understanding this in Erlang.
>
> Thanks,
> Arun
>
>
> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED
> > wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'd like to quote one statement here: "Network stacks and communication
>> protocols must also define their endianness. Otherwise, two nodes of
>> different endianness would be unable to communicate."
>> As an example, TCP/IP protocol suite is defined to be a big-endian.
>>
>> So, the parsing of protocol primitive shall not be dependent on CPU
>> architecture. E.g. If you protocol say that version is serialized into
>> big-endian then your parsing code shall be same and it is platform
>> independent.
>>
>> - Dmitry
>>
>> P.S: ;-)
>> http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2011/09/simply-explained-1.html
>>
>>
>> On May 12, 2012, at 10:34 AM, Arun Muralidharan wrote:
>>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I have an erlang application which includes parsing of binary data from
>> socket (both TCP and UDP). The binary data is as per some specific
>> protocol, so my options for TCP and UDP sock is as per below:
>>
>> TCP sock :
>> Opts = [binary, {packet, 0}, {reuseaddr, true},
>>             {keepalive, true}, {backlog, 30}, {active, false}],
>>
>> UDP sock :
>> [binary,{active,once},{recbuf,2097152}]
>>
>>
>> Now, when i parse the data I get from socket, I do like this (On UNIX):
>>
>>     << Version:4/big-unsigned-integer-unit:8,
>>        Length:2/big-unsigned-integer:8,
>>        _Rest/binary >> = Bin_event_From_Socket.
>>
>>
>> Now, this would give me a problem when run on LINUX as LINUX is little
>> endian based. So, the option here for me is to convert 'big' to 'little' in
>> the above code.
>>
>> But, Erlang being a VM based language, I must be having some facility to
>> write platform independent code. I searched the NEt but couldnt find much
>> on it.
>> So, the question here is how can i write a platform independent sockaet
>> data parsing code ?
>>
>> Thanks.
>> -Arun
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
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