Re: review/merge request: wip-array-refactor

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Andy!

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun 09 Aug 2009 18:41, address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>> Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

>>> I've written lots of code that deals with srfi-4 vectors. I have three
>>> kinds of use cases. First is data being shoved around in a
>>> dynamically-typed system: dbus messages, gconf values, a system we 
>>> at work, etc. Second, but related, is dealing with chunks of data that
>>> come from elsewhere, like GDK pixbufs, or GStreamer buffers. Third is
>>> hacking compilers, as in Guile itself, or emitting machine code for
>>> other machines.

[...]

>> SRFI-4 is a good fit for the 2nd use case as you're dealing with
>> fixed-width native-endianness numbers coming from C code.
>
> Agreed, modulo the possibility for this data to be embedded within some
> other stream.
>
>> But in this case, I don't think bytevectors are needed at all.
>
> I think they are needed whenever you want to *do* something with this
> data -- i/o for example.

In the 2nd use case (GDK pixbufs, GStreamer buffers), I suppose you
don't do I/O with the data; it just travels back and forth between C and
Scheme code.  Is this correct?

Thanks,
Ludo'.