base64 / mime prc table

[Fairlight]

In the relative spacial/temporal region of
Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 11:23:21AM -0500, Brian K. White achieved the spontaneous
generation of the following:
[ah, the fine art of trimming]
> Whoa hold up there Captain Incredulous.

That's Captain Incredulous SIR.  :)  

> Yes it encodes special url characters, that's the POINT.
> If an item of data, one field, in the query string will have any of those 
> characters in it, they need to be encoded, else they will be interpreted and 
> acted upon by the browser.
> 
> This is just an encoder, if you are so stupid as to encode a whole url with 
> it instead of just the parts that need it, that's your learning experience, 
> I already know where to use a screwdriver and where not to. :)

Yes, but while you and I know this, I can just see people tossing wole
URL's at it.  Don't laugh, Brian--I've seen less intelligent moves.  I'm
just saying that your idea could be expanded upon to be robust enough to
survive even -that- kind of move.  The algorithmic logic isn't hard, it's
just a minor annoyance.

> There are no half-encoded urls, there are no already encoded %, if there is 
> a % in the data, then it needs to be encoded, there is nothing in the entire 
> diatribe above that has a spec of applicability, you started off in a wrong 
> direction and went a mile in it instead of a few steps is all. Next time I 
> suggest starting with a question instead of a mountain of wrong answers.

They're right answers for making it really robust -if- you go from the
assumption that people often don't know what they're doing--especially when
they're doing it for the first time.  Someone getting your table probably
has never needed to do it before, or they'd have written their own.  Those
are the ones that are a danger to themselves, and the ones for which you
have to bulletproof everything.

I'd wager that at some point, someone will download your table and toss an
entire URL at it, and may not get what they really wanted.  That's almost a
sure bet.  So the questions are...do you care if they have a bad experience
the first time out, and do you feel like explaining their mistke to them?

mark->
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