std.serialization: pre-voting review / discussion

[Tyler Jameson Little]

On Wednesday, 14 August 2013 at 19:55:52 UTC, ilya-stromberg 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 14 August 2013 at 19:23:51 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
> wrote:
>> On 2013-08-14 21:11, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>
>>> I'm thinking some people may need to stream to/from large 
>>> files and
>>> would find the requirement of in-core representation limiting.
>>
>> Yes, I understand that. But currently I'm limited by std.xml.
>
> Can you use another serialization format and supports file 
> output for it? For example, can you use JSON, BSON or binary 
> format?

That's often not possible, especially when working with an 
external API.

When working with large files, it's much better to read the file 
in chunks so you can be processing the data while the platters 
are seeking. This isn't as big of a problem with SSDs, but you 
still have to wait for the OS. RAM usage is also an issue, but 
for me it's less of an issue than waiting for I/O.

Even if rotating media were to be phased out, there's still the 
problem of streaming data over a network.

std.xml will be replaced, but it shouldn't require breaking code 
to fix std.serialize.