History

Profpatsch 061a91ff8f refactor(users/Profpatsch/netstring): use toplevel aliases as impls Apparently I had forgotten that these already exist on the toplevel. At one point I should unify the two namespaces, but for now at least acknowledge that they are the same functions. Change-Id: Ie7d14de0b65f6c750d97630798c65f777b3eda8c Reviewed-on: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/7673 Reviewed-by: Profpatsch <mail@profpatsch.de> Autosubmit: Profpatsch <mail@profpatsch.de> Tested-by: BuildkiteCI		2022-12-29 15:30:38 +00:00
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tests	style: format entire depot with nixpkgs-fmt	2022-01-31 16:11:53 +00:00
default.nix	refactor(users/Profpatsch/netstring): use toplevel aliases as impls	2022-12-29 15:30:38 +00:00
README.md	feat(users/Profpatsch/netencode): rename spec -> README	2021-01-23 15:37:26 +00:00

README.md

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