Re: binary file portability?

[Rob Kendrick <lua-l@...>]

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:11:34 +0400
eugeny gladkih <john@gladkih.com> wrote:

>  RK> Making something that can read a generic format, especially when
>  RK> you're doing with floating point numbers, is not fun.  Doing so
>  RK> it's fast is
> 
> you can store them in ASCII, like they are in the source.

What about constant simplification?  The numbers in a compiled chunk
may not be easily or precisely represented in ASCII.  And anyway, at
that point, why bother compiling the chunk at all?  Compilation is not
a barrier to keeping your sources secret, nor is it something that will
keep your code smaller (compiling it often makes it larger.)  The only
thing it saves you is a (small) amount of time compiling it, and the
possibility to exclude the compiler from your build of Lua in tightly
resource-constrained systems.

B.