Re: Worries about content-length

On Mon, 8 May 1995, James Gosling wrote:

> The "hack" aspect, in my opinion, to the random delimiter scheme comes
> from being less than 100% solid.  Admittedly, the probability of a
> false match can be pushed arbitrarily small, but it cannot be made 0.
> Given a good random number generator, I wouldn't worry about it too
> much, except that it really feels like a bug waiting for a place to
> happen.

Agree!  To the extent that content-length isn't specified.  If it is, and
it isn't correct, it is an error condition. I have a real philosophical
problem with the design of non-deterministic protocols. It is not an
unreasonable burden on HTTP servers to require accurate content-length
nor do I believe it an unreasonable burden on UA to do the same.

Dave Morris