Re: Transfer-Encoding questions
Dave Kristol (dmk@research.bell-labs.com)
Fri, 11 Oct 96 15:12:59 EDT
rlgray@raleigh.ibm.com wrote:
> When decoding chunked (section 3.6):
>
> 1) chunk-size is an arbitrary length hex string; however, it does not
> say anything about byte order.
> I presume, since the first digit cannot be zero except for the
> ending chunk, that it is intended to be little endian?
You're thinking too hard. :-) It's just a number. Convert it with
strtol().
>
> 2) the spec is very vague on chunk-ext: it appears to be an extenstion
> mechanism; what am I supposed to do if I don't understand it?
> I presume ignore it.
It is an extension mechanism. Yes, ignore what you don't understand.
>
> 3) what is the point of the CRLF after the chunk-data? We already know
> the size; it is only likely to introduce bugs in implementations
> that decide (falsely) that it is safe to just scan for CRLF.
It makes debugging easier, because each chunk-size begins on a new
line. It would be reckless to scan for CRLF anyway, because CRLF could
be part of the chunked data. So you obviously *have* to use the count.
Dave Kristol