[erlang-questions] unexpected result of term_to_binary

[Steve Davis]

Hi Dmitry,

Unfortunately, Bert-js suffers from the same ambiguity client side.

I have in fact found a reasonable hack which only costs an extra byte and is to prepend NIL_EXT to the list:
1> term_to_binary([[],1,2,3,4]).
<<131,108,0,0,0,5,106,97,1,97,2,97,3,97,4,106>>

Best,
Steve

On Jan 21, 2013, at 2:13 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi Steve,
> 
> There is a well document External Term Format protocol. I am not here to judge that protocol but it is implementable on other languages as well (https://github.com/rustyio/BERT-JS). Yes, it make sense in scopes of that protocol specification. 
> 
> Long time ago, I've been trying to use it for WebApp development and … switched to JSON. :-)
> But I strongly believe that External Term Format make sense for other use-case...
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> Dmitry
> 
> 
> On Jan 21, 2013, at 10:00 PM, Steve Davis <steven.charles.davis@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Dmitry,
>> 
>> It "makes sense" only if the "binary_to_term" decode is done in erlang.
>> 
>> br,
>> /s
>> 
>> On Jan 21, 2013, at 1:53 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> This make sense to me!
>>> 
>>> term_to_binary/1 returns a binary data object which is the result of encoding Term according to the Erlang external term format. See http://erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/erl_ext_dist.html
>>> 
>>> Use list_to_binary or unicode:character_to_binary depends on your use-case.
>>> 
>>> - Dmitry
>>> 
>>> On Jan 21, 2013, at 9:38 PM, Steve Davis <steven.charles.davis@REDACTED> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> The following appears to encode lists of integers as strings (?!?):
>>>> 
>>>> Eshell V5.9.3  (abort with ^G)
>>>> 1> term_to_binary([1,2,3,4]).
>>>> <<131,107,0,4,1,2,3,4>>
>>>> 
>>>> Is there a reason for this that I'm missing?
>>>> 
>>>> regs,
>>>> /s
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> 
>> 
>