Safe usage of text fields from message templates

[Markus Elfring]

Fields can be specified for the construction of error messages by the program parameters “--template” and “--template-location”. This functionality is generally useful.
But I suggest to consider another software development concern when such a field can provide free-form text. If you would like to achieve a customised data transfer by this programming interface in a safe way, you should be able to determine the text end from this information source somehow.

I imagine that two transformation approaches can be appropriate there.

• Specification of a delimiting identifier which must not occur in the text.
• Conversion of the data to a well-known format (like Base64)

[Daniel Marjamäki]

it has worked this way for almost 10 years. people use it. so we can't just change it.

[Markus Elfring]

The functionality can be extended for safe data processing with message templates, can't it?