there's an important distinction. if any item other than the last in incomplete, every item from the incomplete item to the last item (inclusive) will be corrupt. there may or may not be data remaining in the buffer as well.

I think that this comment serves to confuse rather than clarify.

There is no important distinction to be made here. If the data is corrupt then all decoding schemes will fail.

If the data isn't corrupt then having the incomplete item remain in the buffer is an advantage. It means that the program can add to the buffer until at least one record is read.

--
John.

In reply to Re: Re^2: Reading a run length encoded file in a buffering scenario by jmcnamara
in thread Reading a run length encoded file in a buffering scenario by demerphq

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.