Recently, I try to use the boost::spirit::qi binary endian parser to parse some binary data depends on the endianness of the Platform. There is a simple example, like following: Using declarations and variables:

using boost::spirit::qi::little_word; using boost::spirit::qi::little_dword; using boost::spirit::qi::little_qword;

boost::uint16_t us; boost::uint32_t ui; boost::uint64_t ul;

Basic usage of the little endian binary parsers:

test_parser_attr("\x01\x02", little_word, us); assert(us == 0x0201); test_parser_attr("\x01\x02\x03\x04", little_dword, ui); assert(ui == 0x04030201); test_parser_attr("\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08", little_qword, ul); assert(ul == 0x0807060504030201LL);

test_parser("\x01\x02", little_word(0x0201)); test_parser("\x01\x02\x03\x04", little_dword(0x04030201)); test_parser("\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08", little_qword(0x0807060504030201LL));

It works very well. But my questions come, why do we need use some data types like boost::uint16_t, boost::uint32_t here? Can I use unsigned long or unsigned int here? And if I want to parse double or float data type, what boost data type should I use? And please tell me where is boost define the above these types?

Thanks a lot.