summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/src/pkg/gob/encoder.go
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'src/pkg/gob/encoder.go')
-rw-r--r--src/pkg/gob/encoder.go176
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 176 deletions
diff --git a/src/pkg/gob/encoder.go b/src/pkg/gob/encoder.go
index d65a71080..308c58d30 100644
--- a/src/pkg/gob/encoder.go
+++ b/src/pkg/gob/encoder.go
@@ -2,182 +2,6 @@
// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
-/*
- The gob package manages streams of gobs - binary values exchanged between an
- Encoder (transmitter) and a Decoder (receiver). A typical use is transporting
- arguments and results of remote procedure calls (RPCs) such as those provided by
- package "rpc".
-
- A stream of gobs is self-describing. Each data item in the stream is preceded by
- a specification of its type, expressed in terms of a small set of predefined
- types. Pointers are not transmitted, but the things they point to are
- transmitted; that is, the values are flattened. Recursive types work fine, but
- recursive values (data with cycles) are problematic. This may change.
-
- To use gobs, create an Encoder and present it with a series of data items as
- values or addresses that can be dereferenced to values. (At the moment, these
- items must be structs (struct, *struct, **struct etc.), but this may change.) The
- Encoder makes sure all type information is sent before it is needed. At the
- receive side, a Decoder retrieves values from the encoded stream and unpacks them
- into local variables.
-
- The source and destination values/types need not correspond exactly. For structs,
- fields (identified by name) that are in the source but absent from the receiving
- variable will be ignored. Fields that are in the receiving variable but missing
- from the transmitted type or value will be ignored in the destination. If a field
- with the same name is present in both, their types must be compatible. Both the
- receiver and transmitter will do all necessary indirection and dereferencing to
- convert between gobs and actual Go values. For instance, a gob type that is
- schematically,
-
- struct { a, b int }
-
- can be sent from or received into any of these Go types:
-
- struct { a, b int } // the same
- *struct { a, b int } // extra indirection of the struct
- struct { *a, **b int } // extra indirection of the fields
- struct { a, b int64 } // different concrete value type; see below
-
- It may also be received into any of these:
-
- struct { a, b int } // the same
- struct { b, a int } // ordering doesn't matter; matching is by name
- struct { a, b, c int } // extra field (c) ignored
- struct { b int } // missing field (a) ignored; data will be dropped
- struct { b, c int } // missing field (a) ignored; extra field (c) ignored.
-
- Attempting to receive into these types will draw a decode error:
-
- struct { a int; b uint } // change of signedness for b
- struct { a int; b float } // change of type for b
- struct { } // no field names in common
- struct { c, d int } // no field names in common
-
- Integers are transmitted two ways: arbitrary precision signed integers or
- arbitrary precision unsigned integers. There is no int8, int16 etc.
- discrimination in the gob format; there are only signed and unsigned integers. As
- described below, the transmitter sends the value in a variable-length encoding;
- the receiver accepts the value and stores it in the destination variable.
- Floating-point numbers are always sent using IEEE-754 64-bit precision (see
- below).
-
- Signed integers may be received into any signed integer variable: int, int16, etc.;
- unsigned integers may be received into any unsigned integer variable; and floating
- point values may be received into any floating point variable. However,
- the destination variable must be able to represent the value or the decode
- operation will fail.
-
- Structs, arrays and slices are also supported. Strings and arrays of bytes are
- supported with a special, efficient representation (see below).
-
- Interfaces, functions, and channels cannot be sent in a gob. Attempting
- to encode a value that contains one will fail.
-
- The rest of this comment documents the encoding, details that are not important
- for most users. Details are presented bottom-up.
-
- An unsigned integer is sent one of two ways. If it is less than 128, it is sent
- as a byte with that value. Otherwise it is sent as a minimal-length big-endian
- (high byte first) byte stream holding the value, preceded by one byte holding the
- byte count, negated. Thus 0 is transmitted as (00), 7 is transmitted as (07) and
- 256 is transmitted as (FE 01 00).
-
- A boolean is encoded within an unsigned integer: 0 for false, 1 for true.
-
- A signed integer, i, is encoded within an unsigned integer, u. Within u, bits 1
- upward contain the value; bit 0 says whether they should be complemented upon
- receipt. The encode algorithm looks like this:
-
- uint u;
- if i < 0 {
- u = (^i << 1) | 1 // complement i, bit 0 is 1
- } else {
- u = (i << 1) // do not complement i, bit 0 is 0
- }
- encodeUnsigned(u)
-
- The low bit is therefore analogous to a sign bit, but making it the complement bit
- instead guarantees that the largest negative integer is not a special case. For
- example, -129=^128=(^256>>1) encodes as (01 82).
-
- Floating-point numbers are always sent as a representation of a float64 value.
- That value is converted to a uint64 using math.Float64bits. The uint64 is then
- byte-reversed and sent as a regular unsigned integer. The byte-reversal means the
- exponent and high-precision part of the mantissa go first. Since the low bits are
- often zero, this can save encoding bytes. For instance, 17.0 is encoded in only
- two bytes (40 e2).
-
- Strings and slices of bytes are sent as an unsigned count followed by that many
- uninterpreted bytes of the value.
-
- All other slices and arrays are sent as an unsigned count followed by that many
- elements using the standard gob encoding for their type, recursively.
-
- Structs are sent as a sequence of (field number, field value) pairs. The field
- value is sent using the standard gob encoding for its type, recursively. If a
- field has the zero value for its type, it is omitted from the transmission. The
- field number is defined by the type of the encoded struct: the first field of the
- encoded type is field 0, the second is field 1, etc. When encoding a value, the
- field numbers are delta encoded for efficiency and the fields are always sent in
- order of increasing field number; the deltas are therefore unsigned. The
- initialization for the delta encoding sets the field number to -1, so an unsigned
- integer field 0 with value 7 is transmitted as unsigned delta = 1, unsigned value
- = 7 or (81 87). Finally, after all the fields have been sent a terminating mark
- denotes the end of the struct. That mark is a delta=0 value, which has
- representation (80).
-
- The representation of types is described below. When a type is defined on a given
- connection between an Encoder and Decoder, it is assigned a signed integer type
- id. When Encoder.Encode(v) is called, it makes sure there is an id assigned for
- the type of v and all its elements and then it sends the pair (typeid, encoded-v)
- where typeid is the type id of the encoded type of v and encoded-v is the gob
- encoding of the value v.
-
- To define a type, the encoder chooses an unused, positive type id and sends the
- pair (-type id, encoded-type) where encoded-type is the gob encoding of a wireType
- description, constructed from these types:
-
- type wireType struct {
- s structType;
- }
- type fieldType struct {
- name string; // the name of the field.
- id int; // the type id of the field, which must be already defined
- }
- type commonType {
- name string; // the name of the struct type
- id int; // the id of the type, repeated for so it's inside the type
- }
- type structType struct {
- commonType;
- field []fieldType; // the fields of the struct.
- }
-
- If there are nested type ids, the types for all inner type ids must be defined
- before the top-level type id is used to describe an encoded-v.
-
- For simplicity in setup, the connection is defined to understand these types a
- priori, as well as the basic gob types int, uint, etc. Their ids are:
-
- bool 1
- int 2
- uint 3
- float 4
- []byte 5
- string 6
- wireType 7
- structType 8
- commonType 9
- fieldType 10
-
- In summary, a gob stream looks like
-
- ((-type id, encoding of a wireType)* (type id, encoding of a value))*
-
- where * signifies zero or more repetitions and the type id of a value must
- be predefined or be defined before the value in the stream.
-*/
package gob
import (