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by david-gpu
546 days ago
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> Not really: C structs notably don't have variable-length fields Feast your eyes: C99 introduced an ~~abomination~~ feature called flexible array members (FAM), which allows the last member of a struct to be a variable length array. If you want to ~~gouge you eyes~~ learn more, see section 6.7.2.1.16 [0]. > To add insult to injury, it does not offer a standard way to determine field lengths That's awful. You can sort of say the same about variable length struts in C, but at least the strict tupe definition usually has a field that tell you the length of the variable length array at the end. [0] https://rgambord.github.io/c99-doc/sections/6/7/2/1/index.ht... |
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Oh, ISO 8583 has these too!
Sometimes they're even combined with the "feature" described in the article where there's a variable number of fixed-length elements, except for the last element, which is a variable-length string (or sometimes the last field type repeated n times). That's always "fun" to work with.
ISO 8583 really is a living museum of all ideas people had about binary encoding in the last half century or so.