From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Grant Taylor Subject: Re: POM Xtables??? Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:27:38 -0500 Message-ID: <486A3EDA.8030804@riverviewtech.net> References: <935fab200806271054oa7c340evbf465b7a9984498b@mail.gmail.com> <4866F152.7030109@riverviewtech.net> <935fab200806300904rc7dc7b2kf58ab7893c3ef20a@mail.gmail.com> <486907EA.60105@trash.net> <48694787.3080906@trash.net> <4869FCE7.9000404@trash.net> <486A1865.40106@trash.net> <486A39BF.4090206@riverviewtech.net> <486A3AD6.7040905@trash.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <486A3AD6.7040905@trash.net> Sender: netfilter-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Mail List - Netfilter On 07/01/08 09:10, Patrick McHardy wrote: > In any case, its unreasonable to expect us to never *extend* (not > change) the output to accomodate buggy parsers. This is by the way > the same way that is often used to extend binary structures, even > though someone stupid might use exact size checks. *nod* Agreed. However as I sit here and think about it, it may be worth adding a new field *as early as possible* (read closes to the start of line) in the field list that indicates a version, which can be used to determine the fields and their position there in. This would make it very easy for people to write strict parsers down the road. A simple three character hex field (4 bytes including the leading space) would allow for 4k of strict layouts. (Even more 0-9 and a-z or additionally A-Z.) Just a thought. Grant. . . .