Perl is worse!

[Alex Martelli]

"Grant Edwards" <nobody at nowhere.nohow> wrote in message
news:slrn8o4clt.abr.nobody at isis.visi.com...
> In article <8lsu2a02ho4 at news2.newsguy.com>, Alex Martelli wrote:
>
> >7 bits and up, anything goes.  But everything else's size (except
> >for bit-fields, a peculiar oddity) is a multiple of char's size,
> >so the latter's size is often called a 'byte' (which need not be
> >the same thing as an 'octet', though it often is:-).
>
> And all hell generally breaks loose when it isn't -- especially when two
> programs are communicating and they have differing defintions of how many
> bits there are in a byte.  But that's a whole different rant.

That's why protocols are defined in terms of _octets_...

If two programs communicate without following a precisely
defined protocol, or if one or both implement the protocol
incorrectly, then you've got problems -- byte/octet issues
being often the least of them.

(XML helps.  But don't anybody think it's anywhere close to
the panacea it's apparently considered to be in some circles;
that is just Yet Another recurrence of the never-ending dream
for the Magic Bullet:-).


Alex