Alan, > +1, longstr is misleading and it is entirely unfair to blame C > programmers! The type in question is a length-prefixed byte array. There > are no guarantees in the spec about being able to treat it as any type > of string. > > I did a quick search and couldn't find a formal definition for longstr > in the spec - I must be blind, where is it?
I'm guessing it's Section 4.2.5.3 "Strings". I also agree the term longstr is misleading, but the spec does talk about "short and long strings". Actually, the spec is far more misleading, because it explicitly says that "short strings" are UTF-8 encoded (i.e. text), while saying that "Long Strings" are just a length-prefixed array of octets with no requirements at all about the content (so they can carry arbitrary binary data, I guess). Tomas Restrepo [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.winterdom.com/weblog/
