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At 12:10 PM -0400 4/16/04, Bob Wyman wrote:
> Unlike XML, it is exceptionally unlikely that anyone will
>"hand-craft" a document in binary formats or try to build it up in a
>text-editor.
People hand craft TCP/IP packets to malicious ends. I'm sorry, but
hand crafted binary data does need to be considered in the Internet
world.
> Note: Don't bother telling me all the "ASN.1 Horror Stories"
>that resulted from people relying on buggy code. I know all about
>them... All code has bugs.
Of course code has bugs. And connections fail halfway through a file
transfer. And people open up files in Microsoft Word, save them, and
then realize they opened the wrong file. Some editors can corrupt a
file just by opening it. Disks go bad.
Bad data does happen, and robust programs detect it. Binary data is
no cure for this problem. If it were, Word and similar tools would
crash a lot less.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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