Re: Magic numbers again

>Are you looking at the latest version of the DIME spec, released June
>2002? One of the changes was the use of a 5-bit magic number at the
>start of the record

I was looking at the latest spec but my magic radar did not detect any
magic in the 5-bit version number. After all, what magic is there in the
number 1?

Humor aside, a magic number is usually a number (8-bit to 32-bit) with
somewhat low probability of showing up at that point in a typical document
(or stream). I mentioned the potential benefits of a magic number - one
cannot get those benefits with the version number.

My original question was intended to understand the internal discussion
that took place on this topic - I guessed it must have raised and rejected
and I was curious... I am still interested in your insight on this.

Lastly, there's a problem with my estimate (in the previous post) of the
overhead of a magic number. Unless we put it only on the MB record, it
would take extra 4-bytes per record, somewhat more that 4 bytes per
message (and having different layout for the first and other messages is
not elegant).

/d