Ocaml-bitstring doesn't support stream

[GoogleCodeExporter]

   Hi !

For our project (liquidsoap), we have tested ocaml-bitstring, and we find 
it really really good !

However, in order to use it in our project, we would like to be able to 
treat streamed data, which doesn't seem possible at the moment.

Could ocaml-bitstring be extended to support streamed data ? 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 5 Aug 2008 at 11:00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

[This is what I wrote in a private email back to the reporter]

Second issue - bitstrings from streams.  I guess I'm interested to              
know what your approach will be.  Clearly we don't want to make the             
current bitstrings-as-strings impl slower by adding any indirection.            

Also I have another, related requirement: bitstrings from arbitrary             
sources.  I'm very interested in parsing bitstrings where the                   
bitstring is loaded on-demand from some external resource, ie. from             
virtual machine memory or disk image.  This would involve calling some          
arbitrary function when we need to load data.  Something like this:             

  let f start size =                                                            
    load_virtual_memory start size                                              
  in                                                                            
  let bits = Bitstring.bitstring_of_external f in                               
  bitmatch bits with                                                            
  | { ... } ->  (* f is called on-demand to load new data as required *)        

but not exactly like that because we usually also need to jump to               
large offsets within the memory / disk image, and also to follow                
pointers to other structures.  I'm afraid I don't have a precise idea           
about the best interface to this.                                               

Original comment by [email protected] on 20 Aug 2008 at 5:01

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Discussion of this enhancement continues on the mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/bitstring

Original comment by [email protected] on 22 Aug 2008 at 6:57