ietf-822
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Re: RFC 1342 bugs & suggested fixes

1993-02-25 01:48:25
4. multi-byte character sets:

    Problem: RFC 1342 did not consider multi-byte character sets,
    and character sets with switching sequences (e.g. ISO-2022-JP).

    Suggested fixes:  

    1.  An encoded-word must encode an integral number of characters. 

I agree completely with the suggested fix, but I would like to point
out that this problem is not limited to multibyte charsets.
(Otherwise, people will wrongly "blame" this added complexity on
multibyte charsets.)

The Base64 (and RFC 1342's "B") encoding encodes 3 octets in 4 octets,
so if an "encoded-word" is split somewhere within a sequence of 4
octets, you will end up with a non-integral number of octets after
decoding.  I.e. this problem also applies to ASCII.


Erik