Development ideas

Suggested changes to existing protocol

Re-order parameters in IBP_STATUS command

The existing IBP v1.4 implementation is:

version IBP_STATUS RID IBP_ST_INQ password TIMEOUT \n

version IBP_STATUS RID IBP_ST_CHANGE password TIMEOUT \n max_hard max_soft max_duration \n

version IBP_STATUS IBP_ST_RES TIMEOUT \n

Notice that two of the commands have a primary command, IBP_STATUS, a resource ID (RID), followed by a sub-command (IBP_ST_INQ, IBP_ST_CHANGE) and the last version has no RID, just a sub-command, IBP_ST_RES. The current implementation can only be parsed by first reading the whole line in and then counting the number of arguments. The argument count is then used to determine which command is actually being issued. A more natural version of the commands would always have the sub-command immediately follow the IBP_STATUS command.