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what does XDR stand for? and what is it?

Richard Brodie R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk
Tue Apr 25 09:25:19 EDT 2000 
"Shaun" <shogan at iel.ie> wrote in message news:002101bfaeb5$b57f5dc0$2801000a at iel.ie...
>
> im here looking and trying to figure out the xdrlib module,
> it says here - http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-xdrlib.html
> "The xdrlib module defines two classes,
> one for packing variables into XDR representation,
> and another for unpacking from XDR representation.
> There are also two exception classes."
> my question is what is XDR? what does it stand for?

XDR stands for 'external data representation'. It has a few simple
encoding rules: use IEEE floating point, send integers big-endian etc.
It is used primarily in Sun style remote procedure calls - those
associated with the portmapper (e.g. NFS), though it sees some use
in portable file formats also.

Sun produced an informational RFC about it, which should be on your
nearest repository.
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