Re: [DISC] Escaping #$#

[Erik Ostrom <eostrom@research.att.com>]

> > I dunno about this bit; should this be #$#"?
> > It's not a big deal, but it seems cleaner to me.
> 
> I thought that way at first, but then I realized that
> 
> (1) any implementation was going to have to treat the quote prefix
> (whether it be #$#" or #$") entirely different from the OOB prefix
> (#$#), i.e., the quote ISN'T a kind of OOB msg.

Sure it is; it's just a DIFFERENT kind of OOB message.  In theory you
could have multiple protocols that share the #$# prefix.  Not that we
provide much room for them.  Quoting would ideally be either "just
another protocol", or something that lives under all of them.

I guess I'm being selfish about a particular implementation:  I'd like
to be able to direct all incoming MCP-related MOO traffic through
$do_out_of_band_command().  (And I consider this quoting "MCP-related".)
Catching #$" requires me to go through $do_command(), which is a pain,
or define the verb somewhere where it can be overridden by a diabolical
programmer.  (No, I don't know why someone diabolical would bother.)

I don't know, all my arguments on this subject end up crashing into
the fact that the #$#/line-based level of our protocol seems pretty
poorly thought-out.  As a result, I'll go along with whatever gets
decided, but I'm not too happy with any of it.

(Just to clarify, I'd rather let this aspect of MCP 2.1 be poorly
thought-out than spend too much more time thinking about it.)

--Erik