| Doc. no.: | +P0803R0 | +
| Date: | ++ 2017-10-15 | +
| Reply to: | +Beman Dawes <bdawes at acm dot org> + |
| Audience: | +Library Evolution | +
The Boost Endian library manipulates the +endianness of integers +and user-defined types. It provides three approaches to dealing with endianness: +conversion functions, buffer classes, and arithmetic classes. Each approach +has use cases where it is preferred over the other approaches. The purpose of +this RFC is to determine interest in adding all or any of these components to +the C++ standard library or a library TS.
+The Boost Endian documentation (www.boost.org/libs/endian/doc) +provides an overview +and detailed technical specifications for the +conversion +functions, +arithmetic types, and +buffer types. +
+A separate discussion covers +choosing +between the three approaches provided by the library.
+For those not interested in plowing through the entire documentation, the +Overall FAQ, +Conversion +FAQ, +Arithmetic FAQ, and +Buffers FAQ +answer a lot of question likely to arise during standardization.
+All three proposed approaches to endianness would be a pure additions to the +standard library and would break no existing user code (modulo the usual +namespace caveats).
+The Boost Endian reference documentation for + +Conversion, + +Arithmetic, and +Buffer +approaches follows the standard library's Method of description +[description], so provides a fairly close approximation of what proposed wording +would look like. Actual proposed wording will be provided in a proposal document +for any portions of the library of interest to the committee. Names will need +the usual bikeshedding.
+The original design for the arithmetic classes was developed by Darin Adler +based on work by Mark Borgerding. The Boost documentation acknowledges +45+ +other people.
++ + + + + \ No newline at end of file