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  4. Let's "switch" to Something Else

Let's "switch" to Something Else

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  • T Tom Delany

    It's in a thread where it's listening for something from a TCPIP connection (sort of a command channel). It's low-volume, and as such, I don't think the "cleverness" is warranted. And no, it's not commented at all. It's not that I don't understand what he was doing. I just think he was being too clever for his own good. And in the (unlikely?) event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

    WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

    OriginalGriffO Offline
    OriginalGriffO Offline
    OriginalGriff
    wrote on last edited by
    #8

    Perhaps not a meeting with Mr Firing Squad than, but a meeting with Mr Big Stick seems warranted. :laugh:

    The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)

    "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
    "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • T Tom Delany

      It's in a thread where it's listening for something from a TCPIP connection (sort of a command channel). It's low-volume, and as such, I don't think the "cleverness" is warranted. And no, it's not commented at all. It's not that I don't understand what he was doing. I just think he was being too clever for his own good. And in the (unlikely?) event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

      WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

      B Offline
      B Offline
      BobJanova
      wrote on last edited by
      #9

      I don't think it would, as it's doing the + and shift manually. If it was just switch(recv[0]) then it would be endian vulnerable. In the absence of language or framework features that allow you to switch on a string, I have no problem with this.

      J 1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • T Tom Delany

        C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

        BYTE recv\[64\];
        
        DWORD   verb;
        ...
        verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
        
        switch (verb)
        {
        case 'CMD ':
           ...
           break;
        
        case 'MON ':
           ...
           break;
        
        case 'END ':
           ...
           break;
        
        case 'EXT ':
           ...
           break;
        
        default:
            ...
            break;
        }
        

        WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

        G Offline
        G Offline
        Gary Wheeler
        wrote on last edited by
        #10

        That's how you handle tags in ICC profiles, for example. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

        Tom Delany wrote:

        WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated.

        Still one of my favorite sigs on CP.

        Software Zen: delete this;

        J 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • B BobJanova

          I don't think it would, as it's doing the + and shift manually. If it was just switch(recv[0]) then it would be endian vulnerable. In the absence of language or framework features that allow you to switch on a string, I have no problem with this.

          J Offline
          J Offline
          jibalt
          wrote on last edited by
          #11

          You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

          #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

          verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

          switch (verb)
          {
          case VB('C','M','D'):
          ...

          B R J 3 Replies Last reply
          0
          • G Gary Wheeler

            That's how you handle tags in ICC profiles, for example. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

            Tom Delany wrote:

            WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated.

            Still one of my favorite sigs on CP.

            Software Zen: delete this;

            J Offline
            J Offline
            jibalt
            wrote on last edited by
            #12

            No endian-sensitive code (which includes all multibyte chars) is "perfectly sensible".

            G 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • J jibalt

              No endian-sensitive code (which includes all multibyte chars) is "perfectly sensible".

              G Offline
              G Offline
              Gary Wheeler
              wrote on last edited by
              #13

              'Sensibility' of a particular approach always depends upon the problem being solved. Making code endian-insensitive is necessary only if you plan on porting it between different endian environments.

              Software Zen: delete this;

              1 Reply Last reply
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              • J jibalt

                You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

                verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

                switch (verb)
                {
                case VB('C','M','D'):
                ...

                B Offline
                B Offline
                BobJanova
                wrote on last edited by
                #14

                Oh really? So in that case doing switch(*recv) should be safe.

                J 1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • B BobJanova

                  Oh really? So in that case doing switch(*recv) should be safe.

                  J Offline
                  J Offline
                  jibalt
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #15

                  I have no idea which of the things I wrote are the subject of your "oh really", but all of them are correct. As for the rest, it's a non sequitur. Both *recv and multi-char literals are endian-sensitive, so you appear to have committed a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent ... a rather basic failure of logic. But if you want to go around switching on 4-char literals thinking that it's portable, be my guest ... just don't do it in any code that might affect my life.

                  B 1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • T Tom Delany

                    It's in a thread where it's listening for something from a TCPIP connection (sort of a command channel). It's low-volume, and as such, I don't think the "cleverness" is warranted. And no, it's not commented at all. It's not that I don't understand what he was doing. I just think he was being too clever for his own good. And in the (unlikely?) event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

                    WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                    N Offline
                    N Offline
                    NAANsoft
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #16

                    A wee bit of commmenting would be nice, but other than that I cannot see a problem here. As for porting to big-endian system: First of all, that will never happen. Secondly, there will be more places to fix if it did happen. Thirdly, the code is platform-restricted anyway (to Windows), so there is not a problem...:cool:

                    R 1 Reply Last reply
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                    • T Tom Delany

                      C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                      BYTE recv\[64\];
                      
                      DWORD   verb;
                      ...
                      verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                      
                      switch (verb)
                      {
                      case 'CMD ':
                         ...
                         break;
                      
                      case 'MON ':
                         ...
                         break;
                      
                      case 'END ':
                         ...
                         break;
                      
                      case 'EXT ':
                         ...
                         break;
                      
                      default:
                          ...
                          break;
                      }
                      

                      WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                      C Offline
                      C Offline
                      ClockMeister
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #17

                      ?? what's wrong with it?

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • J jibalt

                        You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                        #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

                        verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

                        switch (verb)
                        {
                        case VB('C','M','D'):
                        ...

                        R Offline
                        R Offline
                        Rob Grainger
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #18

                        You're not proposing he should use VB are you?

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • N NAANsoft

                          A wee bit of commmenting would be nice, but other than that I cannot see a problem here. As for porting to big-endian system: First of all, that will never happen. Secondly, there will be more places to fix if it did happen. Thirdly, the code is platform-restricted anyway (to Windows), so there is not a problem...:cool:

                          R Offline
                          R Offline
                          Rob Grainger
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #19

                          Why is that code platform-restricted to Windows? I've seen DWORDs on many platforms, so there's really nothing here to suggest that.

                          N 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • R Rob Grainger

                            Why is that code platform-restricted to Windows? I've seen DWORDs on many platforms, so there's really nothing here to suggest that.

                            N Offline
                            N Offline
                            NAANsoft
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #20

                            Ah, but it was Windows that started it. Nyah, nyah... ;P As for the two other points, they are still valid...

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • T Tom Delany

                              C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                              BYTE recv\[64\];
                              
                              DWORD   verb;
                              ...
                              verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                              
                              switch (verb)
                              {
                              case 'CMD ':
                                 ...
                                 break;
                              
                              case 'MON ':
                                 ...
                                 break;
                              
                              case 'END ':
                                 ...
                                 break;
                              
                              case 'EXT ':
                                 ...
                                 break;
                              
                              default:
                                  ...
                                  break;
                              }
                              

                              WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                              R Offline
                              R Offline
                              RafagaX
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #21

                              I suppose he didn't liked If - else- ifs...

                              CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • T Tom Delany

                                C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                                BYTE recv\[64\];
                                
                                DWORD   verb;
                                ...
                                verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                                
                                switch (verb)
                                {
                                case 'CMD ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                case 'MON ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                case 'END ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                case 'EXT ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                default:
                                    ...
                                    break;
                                }
                                

                                WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                                M Offline
                                M Offline
                                Member_5893260
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #22

                                It's sort of both... it'd be properly brilliant if the "verb =" line were commented...

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • T Tom Delany

                                  It's in a thread where it's listening for something from a TCPIP connection (sort of a command channel). It's low-volume, and as such, I don't think the "cleverness" is warranted. And no, it's not commented at all. It's not that I don't understand what he was doing. I just think he was being too clever for his own good. And in the (unlikely?) event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

                                  WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                                  J Offline
                                  J Offline
                                  jschell
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #23

                                  Tom Delany wrote:

                                  event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

                                  No it wouldn't. The code POSTED would work regardless of that. As mentioned it is a TCP stream so it sequential. The switch statement is using ascii. The only way endianess would matter would be if the stream started to use a different character set. And if it did that it would fail if 1. The character system was not using a 8 bit lower representation of that matched ascii (UTF8 does where UTF16 does not.) 2. AND if the protocol changed. And certainly if item 2 is true then all sorts of problems could result. Such as the rest of the code, following the switch, failing as well.

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • J jibalt

                                    You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                                    #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

                                    verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

                                    switch (verb)
                                    {
                                    case VB('C','M','D'):
                                    ...

                                    J Offline
                                    J Offline
                                    jschell
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #24

                                    jibalt wrote:

                                    You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive.
                                     
                                    To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                                    That however ignores the point that the code was written to support a specific protocol over TCP. If the character set of the protocol changed then that would be just one thing that would likely break.

                                    J 1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • T Tom Delany

                                      C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                                      BYTE recv\[64\];
                                      
                                      DWORD   verb;
                                      ...
                                      verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                                      
                                      switch (verb)
                                      {
                                      case 'CMD ':
                                         ...
                                         break;
                                      
                                      case 'MON ':
                                         ...
                                         break;
                                      
                                      case 'END ':
                                         ...
                                         break;
                                      
                                      case 'EXT ':
                                         ...
                                         break;
                                      
                                      default:
                                          ...
                                          break;
                                      }
                                      

                                      WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                                      J Offline
                                      J Offline
                                      jschell
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #25

                                      Tom Delany wrote:

                                      This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. What is the fourth character of the protocol?

                                      Tom Delany wrote:

                                      I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful":

                                      How would you refactor it?

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • J jibalt

                                        I have no idea which of the things I wrote are the subject of your "oh really", but all of them are correct. As for the rest, it's a non sequitur. Both *recv and multi-char literals are endian-sensitive, so you appear to have committed a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent ... a rather basic failure of logic. But if you want to go around switching on 4-char literals thinking that it's portable, be my guest ... just don't do it in any code that might affect my life.

                                        B Offline
                                        B Offline
                                        BobJanova
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #26

                                        You can use big words all you like, but either 'CMD ' is endian sensitive, i.e. it is the byte stream 'C', 'M', 'D', ' ' on one system and ' ', 'D', 'M', 'C' on another, or it isn't, i.e. it's always 'C', 'M', 'D', ' ' and therefore maps to a different integer. In the first case, *recv won't be correct because the byte stream you're checking for is always the same, but the code in the original example would be, because it manually makes the integer in the big-endian manner, and that will be the value that the constant has if it switches the byte order. And if not, *recv will be correct, even if the integer interpretation of that value will be different. There is one good argument you could have deployed, which is that the standard doesn't actually define whether a multi character constant refers to byte order or integer value. But if it has a consistent meaning in real world compilers, that doesn't really matter.

                                        J 1 Reply Last reply
                                        0
                                        • T Tom Delany

                                          C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                                          BYTE recv\[64\];
                                          
                                          DWORD   verb;
                                          ...
                                          verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                                          
                                          switch (verb)
                                          {
                                          case 'CMD ':
                                             ...
                                             break;
                                          
                                          case 'MON ':
                                             ...
                                             break;
                                          
                                          case 'END ':
                                             ...
                                             break;
                                          
                                          case 'EXT ':
                                             ...
                                             break;
                                          
                                          default:
                                              ...
                                              break;
                                          }
                                          

                                          WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                                          M Offline
                                          M Offline
                                          Martin0815
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #27

                                          In my eyes it is ugly, but one of the easies way to compare strings (up to 8 bytes) in a most efficient way. If it's needed and documented ... ok. I recently saw a very strange way to copy an object in C++:

                                          1. the class defines all its data member attributes within 64 Byte

                                          2. the data member attributes are ordered to use alignment efficently

                                          3. copying the class is done this way (or similar)

                                            C64bitClass src, dst;

                                            // cast the pointer to the source/destination object to __int64 pointers
                                            __int64 *pnSrc = static_cast<__int64*>(&src);
                                            __int64 *pnDst = static_cast<__int64*>(&dst);

                                            // copy the first 64bit of the object - the data of the object
                                            *pnDst = *pnSrc;

                                          This really ugly, isn't it!

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