Re: Less is more

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 11:30:47PM +1000, Brett Watson wrote:
> The usual principle is "Postel's Robustness Principle", which states that an 
> endpoint should be strict in what it sends, but liberal in what it accepts. 

*ARGL*

Have you ever read RFC1812, 1.3.2 Robustness Principle?

It is not about accepting every bullshit and trying to get some sense
from it. It is about stability and that applications must be prepared
to receive packets violating the protocol, but that the application
should not crash on receipt of such packets, but deal with them.
   [ ... ] If the protocol
   specification defines four possible error codes, the software must
   not break when a fifth code is defined.  An undefined code might be
   logged, but it must not cause a failure.

It is not about building workarounds for broken implementations by lousy
or careless programmers breaking the protocol.

	\Maex

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