Netstrings: A 27-Year-Old Protocol Still Solving Message Framing

D.J. Bernstein's 1997 netstrings spec defines a simple, unambiguous way to frame binary data in streams—length prefix followed by data and delimiter. It's a lightweight alternative to hand-rolled parsing that avoids off-by-one errors and works cleanly with binary payloads, making it relevant for anyone building protocols or message queues.