On Tuesday 06 September 2005 15:40, Mike Beckerle wrote:

I don't draw a distinction between a sequence of N bytes and an N-byte represenational-size object of undetermined type. Or rather, the difference is just of the intent of the person using it.

The key role for DFDL is to convey the intent of the producer to the ultimate consumers (without knowing who may consume)

Do you want a type where it is simply an error to access individual bytes? I.e., so we can express the length in bytes but without expressing that you should/can access it byte by byte?

This is exactly the point of the blob. The tag means "if you don't know what this tag means, don't touch this blob." The case I'm concerned with is a generic grid service that will do something to an array of bytes. E.g., make a JPEG, or run a text mining algorithm. It needs to know the difference between "array of bytes" and "blob".