ietf-nntp 32/64 bit question

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Matthias Andree said:
>> The way to do it is for you to define a BIGNUM extension. Then a server can
>> respond
>>     401 BIGNUM Article numbers exceed 2**32
>> any time the issue comes up and the client hasn't indicated it can handle
>> big numbers.
> Eww. That's going to be awful to code,

Why?

> in a server software you'll need
> to check any reply.

Let's see.

* LIST EXTENSIONS needs to add BIGNUM.
* Need a BIGNUMSOK command that sets a flag in the server.
* If the flag is not set, then:
  - you generate a 401 BIGNUM when GROUP or LISTGROUP sees a group with
    article numbers over 2**32;
  - you need to filter the various LIST command outputs to ignore such
    groups.

I think that's all.

> I wonder how many software packages would actually
> care -- it's a lot of complexity for a use that's not visible yet.

The whole thing seems a non-problem right now. It's certainly not worth
making all clients non-conformant. I've shown a way to fix the problem in
an upwards-compatible manner.

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