The DCS message header

Each DCS message must start with 26 bytes of text message. These 26 bytes must contain a 2 numbers is ASCII format. The two numbers indicate the size of the text section (in bytes) and binary section (in bytes). The text message must contain a terminating 0 at the end of the two numbers. This allows a library to simply use the scanf function to obtain the two numbers.

An example header may look like this:

1

2

3

5

2

3

2

5

0x00

The first number in this example indicates that there are 1235 bytes of text following the header. The second number in this string indicates that there are 2325 bytes of binary data following the 1235 bytes of text.

The 0x00 terminates the header.

DCSS does not currently support the binary portion of the DCS message completely. In other words, the binary message should always be ``0'' for messages passed from DHS to DCSS.

The binary portion of the message is currently only used for sending the authentication key to BLU-ICE during the authentication stage made during the initial connection of BLU-ICE to DCSS.