Better way to get Nat8 from Time?

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1

There must be a better way to do this! Thanks!

      // 0 - we update the epoch
      if (count == 0) {
        let dig = SHA256.Digest();
        dig.write(epoch);

        // Time bytes
        let time : Nat64 = Nat64.fromIntWrap(Time.now());
        let t1 : Nat8 = Nat8.fromNat(Nat64.toNat((time << 0) & 255));
        let t2 : Nat8 = Nat8.fromNat(Nat64.toNat((time << 8) & 255));
        let t3 : Nat8 = Nat8.fromNat(Nat64.toNat((time << 16) & 255));
        let t4 : Nat8 = Nat8.fromNat(Nat64.toNat((time << 24) & 255));
        dig.write([t1, t2, t3, t4]);

        epoch := dig.sum();
      };
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2 
        // Time bytes
        let time : Nat64 = Nat64.fromIntWrap(Time.now());
        let buf = Buffer.Buffer<Nat8>(8);
        for (i in Iter.range(0, 7)) {
          let b = Nat64.fromNat(i*8);
          let n = Nat8.fromNat(Nat64.toNat((time << b) & 255));
          buf.add(n);
        };
        dig.write(buf.toArray());

slightly better, but all the conversions are crazy and took me a while to figure out

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3

I think we should probably provide a toBlob for each scalar type (littelendian) and, separately, direct indexing into Blobs.

Would that be better?

I actually have most of the compiler support for that available already.

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4

yes! I guess- I’ll trust your judgement but I just dont like writing code like that with multiple conversion functions.

Sorry, probably ignore this I realised when I wrote this I understood less about motoko than I do now. The main thing was that Nat >> Nat didn’t work and Nat8 >> Nat8 did . Wasn’t clear.

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