I wrote a decoder that reads binary telegrams (or messages) with different types (meaning different structures) from a log file. For each telegram type the table has an unpack template that defines the structure of the telegram and a list of names for its fields. The structure is unpacked and the values are formatted with their names to make a readable string representation describing the content of the telegrams.

Currently this works well with simple types and single arrays prefixed with their length. The structure of the telegrams are given and part of an interface. I agree, there could be simpler unified packings, but that is what I have to deal with.

Maybe it is a good idea to allow 'two step unpacking', in order to enable the decoding of more complex structures. Thanks, I have to think about it.