Re: Status of HTTP-WG documents

John Franks (john@math.nwu.edu)
Thu, 23 Apr 1998 10:44:27 -0500 (CDT) 

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Scott Lawrence wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, John Franks wrote:
> 
> > One thing that I don't like is
> > 
> >     nc-value         = 8LHEX
> > 
> > It should be 
> > 
> >     nc-value         = *LHEX
> 
> I was the one that specified the fixed size (implying leading zeros)
> originally (though I think that I used 4 rather than 8); my thinking was
> that it would avoid any potential problems with one side using the
> leading zeros and the other not.  I can live with it either way.
> 

How about doing what is done for the chunked TE and using

       lhex-no-zero    = <LHEX excluding "0">
       nc-value        = lhex-no-zero  *LHEX

to forbid the leading zeros.  I think that at least 99% of the time the
nc-value will be a single digit.  It is kind of wasteful and silly to
require an enormous number of 

        nc=00000001

fields.  I suppose for backwards compatibility we should as
servers to tolerate the leading zeros.

John Franks
john@math.nwu.edu