A message consists of: header data end-of-data-marker a character with value zero header: stopos literally: "stopos" TAB field separator: '/' protocolnumber human readable string, eg "0001" TAB whoami human readable string TAB command human readable string, eg "next" TAB poolname poolname, eg "mypool" TAB user human readable string, eg "willem" TAB length of header may not exceed 256 bytes data: string not containing 0-bytes, example "-l 1 2 3" Max length = 4096 example: stopos\t0001\tnext\tmypool\twillem\t-l 1 2 3\0 None of above may containg 0-bytes, except for the end-of-data marker