How can the float data type be serialized in HBase/Python to maintain its sorting order in byte encoding?

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To serialize a float data type in HBase/Python and maintain its sorting order in byte encoding, you can use the struct module in Python. The struct module provides functions to pack and unpack data in a specific byte order.

Here is an example code snippet that demonstrates how to serialize a float value in HBase/Python using the struct module:

import struct

def serialize_float(value):
    # Convert float to bytes
    float_bytes = struct.pack('>f', value)

    # Return byte string
    return float_bytes

The above code uses the pack function from the struct module to convert the float value to bytes in big-endian byte order, which is used in HBase. The resulting byte string can be stored in HBase as a byte array.

To deserialize the byte array back to a float value, you can use the unpack function from the struct module:

def deserialize_float(byte_str):
    # Unpack byte string to float
    float_value = struct.unpack('>f', byte_str)

    # Return float value
    return float_value[0]

The above code uses the unpack function from the struct module to convert the byte array back to a float value, using the same big-endian byte order as used during serialization. The resulting float value can be used in Python for further processing.