[fpc-pascal] Writing floating points to steams

[Torsten Bonde Christiansen]

On 2016-01-13 10:06, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> Serguei TARASSOV wrote:
>> On 13/01/2016 08:47, fpc-pascal-request at lists.freepascal.org wrote:
>>> On 2016-01-12 10:45, Torsten Bonde Christiansen wrote:
>>>> Since TStream doesn't have any native WriteFloat/Double and the likes,
>>>> some conversion is needed - but what is a good strategy for this?
>> Depends on size constraints.
>> In the simple case you should convert float to locale-independent 
>> string value (no spaces, no commas separators) then write it.
>> If the size does matter, you may convert float to corresponding byte 
>> array then write it.
>
> Can I ask a naive question here please: does a binary stream store 
> endianness anywhere? In other words, is there any indication that 
> something running on ARM is about to get into trouble by reading 
> something written by (big-endian) MIPS?
Not that I'm aware of - i would think of it as a stream of bytes. 
Endianess is defined by the CPU not by the file.
>
> Should writing binary floating point to a stream note that it's IEEE 
> format, just in case anybody ever tries to process it on a platform 
> that supports alternatives?
>
It would be great if storing floating point could be in IEEE, to have a 
standard as reference.

Regards,
Torsten.