Encoding for IPLD paths

[mildred]

Following discussions on #61 and #62, I noticed that on #61 we decided to encode links using the multiaddress format, and on #62 we defined what we wanted for the textual representation.

My question is: do we want to really use multiaddress to encode IPLD paths or do we want to use a similar encoding scheme but different (because the domain is different).

I came up with the following idea. Let's say we have a path that looks like:

/ipfs/HASH/foo//bar/baz/@link/boo

We could encode it as:

<id for ipfs><hash length><multihash>
  <id for internal link><length>"foo"
  <id for external // link>
  <id for internal link><length>"bar"
  <id for internal link><length>"baz"
  <id for external @link>
  <id for internal link><length>"boo"

This is compatible with the multiaddress scheme, but do we implement it there or do we do it elsewhere. If so, where?

[hsanjuan]

I think at this point IPLD paths are clearly defined and this is old. Closing.

@warpfork re-open if I'm wrong here.