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IMO that distinction doesn't make much sense. Text is (as soon as it's stored on a computer) a binary format: you have to specify encoding, etc. Inserting or r

IMO that distinction doesn't make much sense. Text is (as soon as it's stored on a computer) a binary format: you have to specify encoding, etc. Inserting or removing a control character in a binary file would break stuff too. Maybe even more so. You may think of the ability to add CRCs (or at least checksums/parity bits) in a binary file? That's extra work, and can be provided by other mechanisms, like par files or at the filesystem level. The advantage of text formats is that binary decoders for text are ubiquitous. That said, it's usually simple to filter input data through a decoder like gzip.

IshKebab 4y ago
You're not thinking about the human element. Parsers are implemented by real people, and they make mistakes. If a format is human-readable and text based it's both far more likely that a) the spec isn't actually complete (because there's an implicit "sensible" option), and b) people don't read the spec anyway and guess the "sensible" option. There are countless examples of bugs and security flaws in HTTP that wouldn't have been a problem with e.g. Protobuf.