[whatwg] NULL characters in manifests

• From: Alexey Proskuryakov <ap@webkit.org>
• Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:49:07 +0300
• Message-ID: <18E51686-CFE5-46D0-AC2B-A562BA1C0BDD@webkit.org>

> The user agent must decode the bytestream corresponding with the  
> manifest to be parsed, treating it as UTF-8. Bytes or sequences of  
> bytes that are not valid UTF-8 sequences must be interpreted as a U 
> +FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER. All U+0000 NULL characters must be  
> replaced by U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTERs


   The requirement to replace NULL characters with U+FFFD appears to  
be non-verifiable, as the effect of preserving NULLs is the same (an  
URL is treated as invalid).

   I think it would be better to omit this requirement, as it is just  
a disguised and somewhat misguiding warning about the perils of NULLs  
in strings (usually in C-style strings). At least for WebKit, I expect  
that it would be safer and easier to avoid such problems without  
introducing a new decoder mode just for manifests.

- WBR, Alexey Proskuryakov

Received on Friday, 21 March 2008 13:49:07 UTC