📅 Original date posted:2012-12-03
📝 Original message:> It would also be really nice to migrate to textual representations of data
> structures as opposed to binary ones. The most successful internet
> standards are based on text.
There are lots of successful binary protocols: TCP, IP, PNG, JPEG,
MP3, DNS, SSH, SSL, the Bitcoin protocol itself. What's more some
other protocols that are text based have suffered serious problems due
to that choice. Witness the absurd design of SMTP that means you can't
start a paragraph with the word From because that's a new-message
marker! Or the fact that file attachments grow by 33% when you send
them. Or the various exploits that can exist in web servers thanks to
header splitting attacks.
Trying to represent something binary as text doesn't make any sense.
If you look at these data structures they consist of keys, signatures,
hashes, certificates and other fundamentally binary things. You'd just
end up base64 encoding everything anyway, at which point all you've
done is design an inefficient binary protocol that masquerades as
text. The disadvantages of both with the advantages of neither.
Protocol buffers have a text form that you can print to and parse
from, if you so wish, though I only normally see people use that
support for debug prints and sometimes because they want to load
hand-written config files directly into protobuf generated objects.
Mike Hearn [ARCHIVE] /
npub17t…4qgyd
2023-06-07 10:42:47
in reply to nevent1q…f9ph
Author Public Key
npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgydPublished at
2023-06-07 10:42:47Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2012-12-03\n📝 Original message:\u003e It would also be really nice to migrate to textual representations of data\n\u003e structures as opposed to binary ones. The most successful internet\n\u003e standards are based on text.\n\nThere are lots of successful binary protocols: TCP, IP, PNG, JPEG,\nMP3, DNS, SSH, SSL, the Bitcoin protocol itself. What's more some\nother protocols that are text based have suffered serious problems due\nto that choice. Witness the absurd design of SMTP that means you can't\nstart a paragraph with the word From because that's a new-message\nmarker! Or the fact that file attachments grow by 33% when you send\nthem. Or the various exploits that can exist in web servers thanks to\nheader splitting attacks.\n\nTrying to represent something binary as text doesn't make any sense.\nIf you look at these data structures they consist of keys, signatures,\nhashes, certificates and other fundamentally binary things. You'd just\nend up base64 encoding everything anyway, at which point all you've\ndone is design an inefficient binary protocol that masquerades as\ntext. The disadvantages of both with the advantages of neither.\n\nProtocol buffers have a text form that you can print to and parse\nfrom, if you so wish, though I only normally see people use that\nsupport for debug prints and sometimes because they want to load\nhand-written config files directly into protobuf generated objects.",
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