Subject: OCP: maximum size

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:10:57 -0700 (MST)

OCP limits various sizes to 2147483647 which is the maximum signed
"native" integer on most systems. This is done to simplify parsing and
to reduce the number of size-related vulnerabilities.
Implementations can negotiate support for larger sizes, of course.

Is some situations, an agent may want to say "until the end" or
"maximum supported size" when sending a size- or an offset-related
parameter value.

Is it worth introducing a "max" syntax token so that implementations
would not have to resort to using 2147483647 constant and risk of
running into interoperability problems with implementations that
unilaterally enable support for larger sizes (or implementations that
silently support smaller sizes only)?

A "max" token would mean "maximum supported size", essentially. This
will complicate parsing a little because parsers would have to handle
"max" as a special case, of course:

	size = "max" / 1*DIGIT

Are any protocols using a similar mechanism?

Alex.