Ok; thanks.  We have a decoder that
handles this case; it's just that we're
considering whether to continue with that
decoder or implement a new one.  In the
process of prototyping a replacement, I
found the blocked format and couldn't find
anything in 690/8825 that stated this is
an allowed format.  -- Wayne


-----Original Message-----
From: Bancroft Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 11:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: Wayne Adams
Subject: Re: [ASN1] "Blocked" BER data?

On Wed, 4 May 2005, Wayne Adams wrote:

> Hello, all:
>
>   I'm trying to process some data files that are described as being 
> BER encoded but are also blocked.  Of the two examples I have, the 
> fill octets for one of the files are "00" and for the other, "FF".  Is

> this technically "correct" BER encoding?  I'm not seeing any way to 
> unambiguously discriminate between end-of-contents octets (in the case

> of the "00" fill octets), and I'm also wondering how many "FF" octets 
> you would see in a decode operation before you decided you were 
> looking at padding characters (as opposed to "real" encoded data).

This is technically not "correct" BER in that it is not part of the BER
standard; it is a mechanism utilized by some applications to create
message blocks of fixed size.

There are tools available to process BER-encoded messages of the kind
you describe (encodings followed by "00" or "FF" fill bytes), such as
the OSS CDR Assistant: http://www.oss.com/products/cdr.html.

Bancroft
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