5 byte length headers (Was: GNUPG 0.3.2 encryption bug)

[Werner Koch]

Brian Warner <warner at lothar.com> writes:

> isn't mention of a format in which the 1/2/4(5) bytes of length are indicated

It has been added to OpenPGP a while ago.  I think you can avoid the
use of these 5 byte headers if you pipe your data to gnupg as in this
case partial length headers are used.

> and the OpenPGP draft use). (is it just me, or is this length representation
> inspired by drugs? Use an 8-byte field and never think about it again. Ever).

:-)

There was a very long thread on the OpenPGP ML about this silly stuff
(Handcrafted huffman encoding).


Werner