Alan Cox writes:
> > > I think the only good format for things that might be extended or
> > > modified over time is a "tagged" format. The BOOTP extension format
> > > is tagged, but binary. They have length bytes, so they don't need
> > > separator bytes.
>
> I'll throw another requirement in here. For many networking applications I
> need to go to a fixed size record scheme for speed.
Is this requirement neccessary for the kernel or for user-level
programs? The file format that I proposed is very simple/fast for
creating (this is, what the kernel would usually do), but it
admittedly requires some extra parsing for evaluating (that is what
user level programs would usually do). If you need to do this fast,
you could try to go with flex/yacc, which often gives acceptable
performance. If this is not an option, and you insist on having fixed
width records, we will have to come up with some extensions to the file
format --- even though, that will either limit versatility or require
us to accept special cased file-formats.
Markus
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