Re: Worries about content-length

I said:
>> You can guarantee (with adequate probability) that the end string is
>> unique without parsing the data, by using a sufficiently good random
>> number generator.
>> 
>> I guarantee it.

and jag@scndprsn.eng.sun.com (James Gosling) replied:

> Yes, but it's still a hack.  A simpler solution is to just pick a constant
> byte value (020 springs to mind :-) and use that as an escape code.  It
> doesn't fit into the MIME scheme of things, but it's 100% solid and simpler
> to build than mime/multipart

Mime multipart was designed for mail transport through systems where
lines get chopped, wrapped, characters get translated, etc.

It's less likely that HTTP even through proxies will mangled data but
there's a need for a reliable end-marker, I could see adding a new
Content-transfer-encoding. What else beside EOF (and the escape
character itself) needs to be coded with the escape character?