On 03 Apr 2024, at 13:03, Ondřej Kuzník <on...@mistotebe.net> wrote:
>> This has been historically vague - first off, what happens if an >> attempt is made to call ldap_get_values() on binary data, do you get >> an error, or garbage data? The source isn't giving me a clear answer. > > Hi Graham, > in this case binary data means embedded NULs (\0) can be found: given > that what you get back is a naive char * for each value, you stand to > lose information about whether that NUL is part of the value or a > string terminator. So that means garbage data is returned. >> Second question is how do you know which of ldap_get_values() or >> ldap_get_values_len() to call? Obviously you can manually know this, >> but I'm interested in automated behaviour. What is the canonical way >> to discover that if you queried a jpegPhoto (for example) that the >> result would be binary? > > You either expect the data to be a string of some sort (no embedded > NULs), then you're free to use whichever or you are prepared to accept > arbitrary bytestreams and you need to use the one that returns bervals. > That's all there is. So am I right in understanding there is no way to ask the server "what type is this attribute you just gave me, is this arbitrary octets or a NUL terminated string"? > You're welcome to propose better wording if you can make it clearer to a > reasonably competent C developer (I'm sure we can assume that they > understand how strings are laid out etc.) The reason this matters has nothing to do with reasonably competent C developers, but rather options given to end users. If the end user is allowed to provide an attribute in a configuration file, do I force the end user to know about binary values (as is common now), or is there a way I can be nice to the end user and have the system behave sensibly based on whether the return data is a string or binary? Regards, Graham --
