> Actually, that touches on an issue that I'd be very 
> interested to see a good discussion of. There are a number of 
> ways to pass data, http for instance uses content-length 
> headers or simply defining the end of the data to be when the 
> connection is closed. (over simplifying here...) SMTP uses 
> the a single .\n by itself as the end of the message, if the 
> message has a .\n in it, have ..\n instead. (although there 
> is an extension to simply pass stuff 8-bit clean, not quite 
> sure the details 
> there) In researching this I did find a site that talked about those 
> various methods, but not in the context of a "universally" 
> agreed upon 
> best practices document.

IMHO this is an indication that there is not a lot of difference in
'bestness' between the various methods used.

But note that not all transport level protocols are good at defining the
end of a connection. IIRC the now almost forgotten OSI TP4 had a
reliable (two or three way handshake) way to close a connection, TCP has
not.

Wouter van Ooijen

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Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 
 

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