Clarification: saving offset in binary about fastbinaryencoding HOT 4 CLOSED

Consider this example

struct
{
  bytes field1;
  string field2 = "";
  byte[] field3;
}

in the struct definition you'll have 3 offsets of unit32 pointing to the corresponding data later in buffer

[uint32(field1-offset)],[uint32(field2-offset)],[uint32(field3-offset)],[field1-size,field1-data],[field2-size,field2-data],[field3-size,field3-item1,...,field3-itemN]

from fastbinaryencoding.

Great, thanks for the fast response!

Using your example, I was wondering, why not just remove the
[uint32(field1-offset)],[uint32(field2-offset)],[uint32(field3-offset)]

and write directly
[field1-size,field1-data],[field2-size,field2-data],[field3-size,field3-item1,...,field3-itemN]

This would reduce the size and parsing complexity.
Or am I missing a use-case where the offset has an advantage?

from fastbinaryencoding.

You need to know offsets to access struct fileds, otherwise you need to travel from filed1 to fieldN. Without offsets your data will be variadic size.

from fastbinaryencoding.

Perfect, makes sense, thanks for the clarification!

from fastbinaryencoding.