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Text is the problem, here and everywhere else. Text encourages looking for delimiters, escaping, and flexibility (optional whitespace, case insensitivity, leadi

Text is the problem, here and everywhere else. Text encourages looking for delimiters, escaping, and flexibility (optional whitespace, case insensitivity, leading zeros, redundant signs, newline style compatibility). Compared to binary with length prefixes, that’s really slow, prone to injection vulnerabilities and subtle incompatibility, requires copying, introduces more side channels (the length of your message now depends on the values of numbers inside it!), ….

deathanatos 6y ago
And once you get down to it, text still requires tools to parse. I routinely run stuff through `jq`, because despite JSON being a text format, actually consuming it as a human requires a tool. (Often to filter it, but sometimes just to colorize the output to make it legible.)
CivBase 6y ago
Text =/= Variable Length I can store fixed-length data using text. A strict schema can specify things like fixed lengths, value padding, orders for maps, exact whitespace rules, etc which can entirely remove the need for delimiters. A schema could even require length prefixes, just like you might use for a non-text format. These concepts do not necessitate abandoning text. If you need the data to be readable/writable by a human with minimal tooling, you can still leverage text without sacrificing much parsing efficiency.
- minitech 6y ago
  In theory, sure. In practice, nobody does, and length prefixes stop a format like that from being conveniently writable with a plain text editor.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    I work on avionics and we definitely use fixed-length text all the time. Text is often much more convenient than blobs, even when adhering to strict schemas. Syntaxes like XML, JSON, YAML, etc have become popular for their convenience and versatility, but they do not represent the whole of what is possible with text.
  - renox 6y ago
    You've not used enough Ada: its variable length string is so clunky that fixed sized text is used instead..

deathanatos 6y ago

And once you get down to it, text still requires tools to parse. I routinely run stuff through `jq`, because despite JSON being a text format, actually consuming it as a human requires a tool. (Often to filter it, but sometimes just to colorize the output to make it legible.)

CivBase 6y ago

Text =/= Variable Length I can store fixed-length data using text. A strict schema can specify things like fixed lengths, value padding, orders for maps, exact whitespace rules, etc which can entirely remove the need for delimiters. A schema could even require length prefixes, just like you might use for a non-text format. These concepts do not necessitate abandoning text. If you need the data to be readable/writable by a human with minimal tooling, you can still leverage text without sacrificing much parsing efficiency.

minitech 6y ago
In theory, sure. In practice, nobody does, and length prefixes stop a format like that from being conveniently writable with a plain text editor.
- CivBase 6y ago
  I work on avionics and we definitely use fixed-length text all the time. Text is often much more convenient than blobs, even when adhering to strict schemas. Syntaxes like XML, JSON, YAML, etc have become popular for their convenience and versatility, but they do not represent the whole of what is possible with text.
- renox 6y ago
  You've not used enough Ada: its variable length string is so clunky that fixed sized text is used instead..