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Ethereal-dev: [ethereal-dev] The next version of Ethereal?

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Richard Sharpe <sharpe@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 03:05:18 +1000
Hi,

finally, something that Guy suggested to me many months ago has sunk in.

We have invested a lot of effort into Ethereal, but it does not provide the
flexibility that I need.

I envision the following program structure:

  while (get_next_frame(etc)) {

    decode_frame( ... , Level);  /* These two might be in a call-back
    process_frame( ...);

  }

Process_frame might display it the way Ethereal currently does, or might
filter and write the selected frames, or might count frames with certain
properties, etc.

I would expect decode_frame to return a tree of attribute value pairs, and
Level allows us to control how deep the decode goes, because for some
things you don't need to go all the way.

The attrirbute value tree would include field labels in the tree, and much
the same stuff that Ethereal currently puts on the proto tree, so we may be
able to recover the investment in decode routines.

Comments please.

Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe@xxxxxxxxxx, Master Linux Administrator :-),
Samba (Team member, www.samba.org), Ethereal (Team member, www.zing.org)
Co-author, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours
Author: First Australian 5-day, intensive, hands-on Linux SysAdmin course