Re: plain text protocol [was: Re: Performance analysis questions]

Andrew Payne <payne@n8kei.tiac.net>
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Date: Sun, 5 Jun 1994 04:42:36 +0200
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From: Andrew Payne <payne@n8kei.tiac.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
Subject: Re: plain text protocol [was: Re: Performance analysis questions] 
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Rick Troth writes:

>> Suppose, in the future, we want to be able to take the md5 checksum of
>> the HTTP headers. If you corrupt the bytes by throwing away whitespace
>> at the end of a line, you defeat such efforts.
> 
>	You're saying that HTTP is  -not-  a plain text protocol. 
>	If it's not a plain text protocol,  then GET should have been 
>something like  (in C): 
> 
>		sprintf(GET_REQUEST,"%c%s",0x01,URL) 


What is a "plain text protocol"?  If you answer, please be very, very 
precise.

HTTP depends on reliable, 8-bit transport.  The fact that HTTP has byte 
sequences that spell out English words has no implication on other aspects 
of the protocol.

-andy