Filling Device Labels to 32 chars is an error? - E1.20 RDM (Remote Device Management) Protocol Forums

ericthegeek · May 6th, 2013

I see what you're talking about now: There's a responder that will accept any length Label in a SET command, but when the controller does a GET for the Label, the responder always returns 32 characters with the extra length padded out with ASCII Spaces.

Personally, I don't really like this behavior, and I think it's legitimate for the tests to flag it as an error. The test is sending specific data, and when it asks for the same data back it's getting something different. Even if this behavior is deliberate, it's something that the person running the tests would want to be aware of.

We can argue that perhaps this specific case should be a Warning and not an Error, but it's unusual behavior that should be highlighted.

If there are specific controllers out there that aren't handling strings properly, those controllers need to be fixed. One of the quirks of RDM that strings can be both length terminated, and null terminated. Some software developers (especially developers that are used to C-style strings) miss this detail.

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May 6th, 2013	#6
ericthegeek Task Group Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 390	I see what you're talking about now: There's a responder that will accept any length Label in a SET command, but when the controller does a GET for the Label, the responder always returns 32 characters with the extra length padded out with ASCII Spaces. Personally, I don't really like this behavior, and I think it's legitimate for the tests to flag it as an error. The test is sending specific data, and when it asks for the same data back it's getting something different. Even if this behavior is deliberate, it's something that the person running the tests would want to be aware of. We can argue that perhaps this specific case should be a Warning and not an Error, but it's unusual behavior that should be highlighted. If there are specific controllers out there that aren't handling strings properly, those controllers need to be fixed. One of the quirks of RDM that strings can be both length terminated, and null terminated. Some software developers (especially developers that are used to C-style strings) miss this detail.