tvl-depot/users/Profpatsch/netstring
Profpatsch 7e888c3c7b feat(nix): add basic netstring nix generation functions
Moving to toplevel so I can use them with `runExecline`. They should
be pretty atomic, and are proven to work (tests are still in my user
dir, since they test the producers indirectly via the python parser
and I don’t want to pull it out right now).

Change-Id: Id0baa3adcb2ec646458a104c7868c2889b8c64f5
Reviewed-on: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/3054
Reviewed-by: Profpatsch <mail@profpatsch.de>
Tested-by: BuildkiteCI
2021-04-24 09:54:34 +00:00
..
tests feat(nix): add basic netstring nix generation functions 2021-04-24 09:54:34 +00:00
default.nix feat(nix): add basic netstring nix generation functions 2021-04-24 09:54:34 +00:00
README.md feat(users/Profpatsch/netencode): rename spec -> README 2021-01-23 15:37:26 +00:00

Netstring

Netstrings are a djb invention. They are intended as a serialization format. Instead of inline control characters like \n or \0 to signal the end of a string, they use a run-length encoding given as the number of bytes, encoded in ASCII, at the beginning of the string.

hello -> 5:hello,
foo! -> 4:foo!,
こんにちは -> 15:こんにちは,

They can be used to encode e.g. lists by simply concatenating and reading them in one-by-one.

If you need a more complex encoding, you could start encoding e.g. tuples as netstrings-in-netstrings, or you could use netencode instead, which is what-if-json-but-netstrings, and takes the idea of netstrings to their logical conclusion.

Resources:

Spec: http://cr.yp.to/proto/netstrings.txt Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netstring