FoundationDB's tuple layer: an order-preserving encoding for structured keys.

This is the encoding to reach for when keys are composite — {"balances", account_id}, {user_id, timestamp} — because the byte ordering of packed keys matches the logical ordering of the values inside them. Sorting the encoded keys sorts the tuples, which is what makes a range read over a prefix return the rows you meant, in the order you meant.

iex> Bedrock.Encoding.Tuple.pack({"balances", 1}) <
...>   Bedrock.Encoding.Tuple.pack({"balances", 2})
true

iex> Bedrock.Encoding.Tuple.unpack(Bedrock.Encoding.Tuple.pack({"a", 1, nil}))
{"a", 1, nil}

Supported types

Binaries, integers (64-bit signed range), floats, nil, lists, and tuples, nested arbitrarily. Anything else raises ArgumentError on pack/1.

Integers are encoded by magnitude, smallest representation first, with negatives stored as complements so that the ordering property holds across zero. Null bytes inside binaries are escaped, so a binary containing 0x00 still sorts correctly against one that does not.

The wire format is FoundationDB's, so keys written here are readable by any other FDB tuple-layer implementation.