LDAP_MOD_BVALUES / "Binary option"

[Peter Mogensen <apm@mutex.dk>]

Hi,

I'm trying to make sense of the use of "binary" in misc client API's.

Some API's (like perl Net::LDAPapi) seem to offer a "b" option do 
add/modify operations which controls whether the ";binary" 
AttributeOption is set on an attribute.
For Net::LDAPapi this translates (from what I see in the libldap source) 
to LDAP_MOD_BVALUES

But when reading the sources and RFC it seems to me that 
LDAP_MOD_BVALUES and ";binary" is two completely different things. (Also 
";binary" has been removd from RFC4511).

Am I right in concluding that LDAP_MOD_BVALUES (and thus "b" in 
Net::LDAPapi) only controls which BER type is used and as such is 
completely orthogonal to whether one chooses to set the ";binary" 
attributedescription options?

";binary" use often used with jpegPhoto, but does it have any influence 
on which BER type the server uses to send data to the client?

I would assume that it would be completely safe to ignore ";binary" and 
the only reason to set LDAP_MOD_BVALUES would be if the attribute value 
data contained "\0" bytes. (which would prevent using a string)
Is this correct?

/Peter