Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Rename TVB captured length vs reported length

[Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/17/14 17:07, Evan Huus wrote:
> After yet another patch submission where this was unclear, I would
> like to propose the following change:
>
> tvb_length, tvb_length_remaining, etc. are changed to all operate on
> the reported length on the wire
>
> tvb_reported_* are dropped in favor of tvb_captured_* which operate on
> the available captured length (what is currently given by just
> tvb_length).
>
> The problem is that 95% of the time the intended behaviour is best
> achieved by the reported length, but 95% of the time people new to the
> API pick up on tvb_length and friends and assume that's what they
> want. I realize this is a subtly breaking behavioral change to the
> API, but I figure in the long run it will make a lot of things much
> simpler. It also gives a mental model which is IMHO slightly nicer:
> the TVB represents the entire packet with potentially-incomplete
> backing data, instead of representing the backing data of a
> potentially-bigger-on-the-inside packet.
>
> Thoughts?

+1 from me.

One of the emails from this thread:

https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/200909/msg00291.html

has been sitting in my "todo" list for, well, coming up on 5 years!