sdb/doc/binary-arrays.md

Serializing Arrays

Arrays can be accessed by using the Sdb.Array API as explained in the Arrays section. But if you want a full array serialization/deserialization those methods will not perform as well as the way Sdb.Fmt API does.

That API exposes basic functions to convert an array of numbers or strings from a string to native data. This is a simple example in C:

/* test array of numbers */
ut64 *nums = sdb_fmt_array_num (
	"1,3,,5,8,10,0x33");
int chks[] = {1,3,0,5,8,10,0x33};
int i;
for (i=0; i<*nums; i++) {
    printf ("%d.. ", (int)nums[i+1]);
    if (chks[i] != nums[i+1]) {
        free (nums);
        return 1;
    }
}
printf ("\n");
free (nums);

The following example shows how to convert an array of strings into a single allocated buffer containing all the elements.

/* test array of strings */
char **strs = sdb_fmt_array (
    "foo,bar,cow,low,mem,,jiji");
const char *oks[] = {"foo","bar",
    "cow","low","mem","","jiji"};
if (strs)
for (i=0; strs[i]; i++) {
    printf ("%s %s\n",
	!strcmp (oks[i], strs[i])?
	  "OK":"FAIL", strs[i]);
}
free (strs);