Proposed magic number patch

Nathan Myers ncm at cantrip.org
Wed Oct 8 20:23:49 UTC 1997


John Cowan wrote:
> Chris Newman wrote:
> > Excellent idea, but I'd suggest choosing a magic number based on the
> > principles outlined in RFC 2083 section 12.11.  I propose:
> > 
> > \211 T Z \r \n ^Z \n
> > 
> > as a magic number.
> 
> Thanks for the reference to RFC 2083.  I have two problems:
> 
> 1)	7 bytes is a "peculiar" length.  I suggest adding a NUL
> 	(\0) byte just after the Z, if we go with this scheme.
> 	In which case "strncpy" will have to be replaced with
> 	"memcpy".
> 
> 2)	There are only 20 available bytes.  I am a little
> 	reluctant to consume 8 of them, leaving at most 3
> 	new 32-bit length quantities.  Consuming only 4
> 	is less risky.

I agree that seven bytes is a bit long.  PNG format files suffer
indignities that I don't think the TZ records need to defend against.
I don't know why "^T ^Z" would be insufficient.  In addition, 
though, I'd like to see a version sequence number too, so that 
if the less-than-20 bytes of slop remaining prove insufficient, 
we have a recourse.

I maintain that advisory timestamps:

 - when the information was entered
 - when the information was last known to be current
 - when the information will no longer be officially trustworthy
   (24 hours later, by default)
 - when the local installation will no longer consider the 
   information current (perhaps longer, perhaps shorter, by preference)

would be a useful addition to the format, in support of incremental
network caching.  Of course, we should also move to a 64-bit external
time representation as soon as possible, which would also be the first
increment of the version sequence number.

Nathan Myers
ncm at cantrip.org




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