Re: [Boost-users] [Review] UUID library (mini-)review starts today, November 23rd

On Sat, 6 Dec 2008 15:28:30 -0500, "Scott McMurray" said:

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 15:18, Andy Tompkins wrote:

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On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:05:39 -0300, "Agustín K-ballo Bergé" said:

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Andy Tompkins escribió:

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It could easily be made static. It will _always_ return 16.

Even for architectures with chars bigger than 8 bits long? From a quick read of the library source code, and boost::integer documentation, it seems that the library would not compile there.

Hmm, can anyone verify this? I will address this if it is a problem.

What are the guarantees of the size of a byte? Is a byte always 8 bits?

By C++ definition, a byte is the size of a char, and contains at least 8 bits.

My understanding is that posix sockets require CHAR_BIT == 8, so outside of DSP chips and other special hardware, that's almost always the case. Considering that UUIDs were originally designed for RPC -- typically over sockets -- and that the v1 algorithm is defined using MAC addresses, it's probably a safe assumption.

Thank you. So I think the uuid library will require either that CHAR_BIT == 8 or CHAR_BIT % 8 == 0. That is to say that the platform must have 8 bit bytes. Andy.