Re: Engram Proposal for Serialisation - RFC

[David Manura <dm.lua@...>]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:47 PM, John Hind wrote:
> http://lua-users.org/wiki/EngramProposal

This could have its uses.  Here's some things to consider:

  - Any limits on data structure size imposed by the implementation?
  - en() must be evaluated in entirety in order to extract any part of the data
    (implications for large data structures).
  - Evaluating en() could take an indeterminate length of time: e.g.
    function en() for i=1,1e10 do end; return 1 end
    (implications for DOS)
  - Space efficiency of data representation?
    Compare to Pluto, ASN.1, Google Protocol Buffers, etc.
    (BTW, the libraries for these can be relatively large/complex.)
  - Noncanonical (non-unique physical representation -- see "Canonical XML").
  - Not intended for long-term storage (e.g. versioning).
  - The format of Lua bytecode is not rigorously specified apart from the
    No Frills Guide (alternative: more portable Lua source).