Subj : hpt long subjects and bad packets
To   : Andrew Kolchoogin
From : mark lewis
Date : Sat Jan 11 2020 08:36:10

  Re: hpt long subjects and bad packets
  By: Andrew Kolchoogin to Michael Dukelsky on Sat Jan 11 2020 10:47:44


 AK> As usual, FPD contradicts with itself. :)

there is a huge difference between technical specification and network
policy... what was quoted was policy... FTS-0001 is a little confusing in its
description of field formats in some cases but section A4 seems to be
missed/ignored/skipped over by a lot of people...

----->8 snip 8<-----

 A. Introduction

[...]

   4. Data Description

      A  language  specific  notation  was avoided.  Please help  stamp  out
      environmental  dependencies.   Only  you  can  prevent  PClone  market
      dominance.  Don't panic, there are rectangular record layouts too.

      (* non-terminals *)
      UpperCaseName - to be defined further on

      (* literals *)
      "ABC"         - ASCII character string, no termination implied
      nnH           - byte in hexadecimal

      (* terminals *)
      someName      - 16-bit integer, low order byte first (8080 style)
      someName[n]   - field of n bytes
      someName[.n]  - field of n bits
>     someName(n)   - Null terminated string allocated n chars (incl Null)
>     someName{max} - Null terminated string of up to max chars (incl Null)

      (* punctuation *)
      a b           - one 'a' followed by one 'b'
      ( a | b )     - either 'a' or 'b', but not both
      { a }         - zero or more 'a's
      [ b ]         - zero or one 'b'
      (* comment *) - ignored

      (* predeclared constant *)
      Null          = 00H

----->8 snip 8<-----

so, if the subject field of a packed message is defined as

              +-----------------------+-----------------------+
              |                    subject                    |
              ~                  max 72 bytes                 ~
              |                null terminated                |
              +-----------------------+-----------------------+

that means 71 bytes plus the terminating 0x00 byte...

a lot of us know this but hobby coders may, as mentioned above,
miss/ignore/skip section A4 and cause a defect in their code... the rest of us
can either work around it as many have done over the years or we can reject
those defects and bring the problem to the coder's attention...


)\/(ark
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