Ralf W. Grosse-Kunstleve wrote:

FWIW: For the serialization of C++ arrays wrapped as Python objects (via Python's pickle) I implemented a small "library" (it really is just one header file) for converting integers and floating-point numbers to a pseudo text format. In principle it works just like the conversion to base-10 numbers, but uses base-256 instead. I.e. the result looks like a binary format, but it is as machine-independent as a text format. The serialized strings are smaller than regular text format, but larger than raw binary format.

Integers are serialized like this:

NXX...X

... This is interesting. I made an example as part of the library called:demo_portable_binary or which attempted to handle issues such as endianness and size. I bailed at floating point because of the concern for handling things like conversion between 80 bit IEEE float and 64 proprietary floats. And then I was just making as sketch to inspire someone to implement XDR which I presumed had some sort of way of handling this. (I still don't know how other formats handle this) I like your method. I may steal it yet. Robert Ramey