On 11/17/19 11:41 AM, James E. King III via Boost wrote:
On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 11:06 AM Robert Ramey via Boost
Human editable archives are something people ask for. But it's not really possible in a general way because archives have to reflect the the C++ data structures that they correspond to. If one want's to be able to edit data off line - better would be to start with a free standing archive design using something like google protocol buffers. Then you're into the normal trade offs regarding such libraries.
Since you already support JSON, if you supported YAML as well, you would satisfy the human editable request.
Hmmm - did you read the above? Of course serialization could support JSON, YAML, or even some version of the english language. But this would not mean the the archive is editable unless it's write only. The problem is that the archive contents are strictly dependent upon the C++ data structures being serialized. If you edit the archive in a general way, that is not necessarily preserving the original structure, it won't map the the C++ data structure. So what would be the point? If you restrict your editing to some specific requirements - like just changing some data values - it would be pretty complex to specify and enforce which kinds of editing are allowed. Much easier would be just to write a general purpose JSON parser which the user can one way or another map to his C++ data structure.
- Jim
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