FixIO Documentation

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Global functions

Serialization

function serialize_key(value): Byte[]
function serialize_key(buf: Byte[], value)


Serializes given value in a manner compatible with comparisons in serialized form. This is the same as ordinary serialization except that references are duplicated and the hash tables are sorted by key. This provides a canonical form suitable for keys. Optionally the serialized value can be appended into an existing array.

function serialize_compare(buf1: Byte[], buf2: Byte[]): Integer
function serialize_compare(buf1: Byte[], off1: Integer, len1: Integer, buf2: Byte[], off2: Integer, len2: Integer): Integer


Compares values directly in their serialized form. It is preferred that the serialize_key function is used for serialization to provide consistent sorting of hash keys and avoiding an error when encountering references as they are not supported when comparing. The comparison occurs between the same type only, different types are compared in this order: integers, floats, arrays, strings, hash tables (from smaller to bigger). The result is less than zero if the first value is smaller, greater than zero if the first value is bigger or zero if the values are the same.