Hmmm... <br>I suppose that depends on what methods you use for development. To me, plain text protocols are more effective in test driven development. You can write one or two "test" clients in the scripting language du jour. Extend the server, test, extend again, test, fix stuff, test again. But try that method with, say, NFS. Ewww. <br>
<br>Sure, arbitrary length needs conscious handling. HTTP did that already. So did SMTP. Many ways to do it. <br><br>A really sweet one is XMPP. It's one byte guzzling XML stream. But it's readable (sort of). <br>
<br>With plain text protocols, you can write your server as a shell then throw it under 'xinetd' or 'inetd' and dispense with the TCP handling. Ahhh... <br><br>This stuff is gorgeous. I gotta make you a convert, Jeff. :-) <br>
<br clear="all">-- R; <><<br><br><br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 17:56, Jeff Frontz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jeff.frontz@gmail.com">jeff.frontz@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Plain text protocols are (often) nice for debugging, but they're<br>
painful to write robust software around (just how to you make sure you<br>
can handle everything about a protocol that has a message that can be<br>
any arbitrary length and that gives no clue as to how long it might<br>
be? SIP anyone?)<br>
<br>
Jeff<br>
<br>
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Richard Troth <<a href="mailto:rmt@casita.net">rmt@casita.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> I honestly love plain text protocols. Wish we had more of<br>
> them, then cover with SSL when needed.<br>
<br>
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