(O/T) human readability (was Re: Urgent: MailScanner apparently stopped processing...)

[Mariano Absatz]

El 9 May 2003 a las 21:47, Julian Field escribió:

> At 20:33 09/05/2003, you wrote:
> >El 9 May 2003 a las 17:13, Julian Field escribió:
> >
> > > At 08:01 09/05/2003, you wrote:
> > > >On Fri, 9 May 2003, Julian Field wrote:
> > > >
> >...
> > > >  I checked and the message looks pretty mangled... but
> > > >then again I'm not sure how readable the files in that format are supposed
> > > >to be.
> > >
> > > The Postfix format is not meant to be human-readable. I know what it's
> > > supposed to look like.
> >Arghhhh!
> >Postfix queue files are binary?
> >I might get flamed for this but, WHY???
> >How much bandwidth/diskspace/whatever do they save by not making it human
> >readable?
> >I might get flamed for this, but I think all protocols and file formats
> >should be human-readable (not counting cryptography) "just in case"... just
> >in case there is a bug, just in case the application broke, just in case you
> >don't _have_ the application, whatever...
> >Just my 2c.
> 
> Not only are they binary, but the record lengths require bit-shifting to 
> unpack, so that Postfix can save a few bits on the length of each record. 
> In the record length bytes, the bottom 7 bits are used to store part of the 
> record length, and the 8th bit says that there is another 7 bits of length 
> in the following byte.
Oh my... and do they publish statistics on how many bits they save you? I 
know we are all assembly language programmers and we undertand binary by 
doing:
od -atx1 file
but there are a few people binary impaired out there, and they're not all of 
them lusers...

--
Mariano Absatz
El Baby
----------------------------------------------------------
Conjecture: All odd numbers are prime.
    Mathematician's Proof:
        3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  By induction, all
        odd numbers are prime.
    Physicist's Proof:
        3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  9 is experimental
        error.  11 is prime.  13 is prime ...
    Engineer's Proof:
        3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  9 is prime.
        11 is prime.  13 is prime ...
    Computer Scientists's Proof:
        3 is prime.  3 is prime.  3 is prime.  3 is prime...