Protocol V3 questions (StartupMessage and ParameterStatus)

Tom,

While implementing the V3 protocol I have come across the following 
questions:

1)
Why does the StartupMessage not follow the documentation.  It appears 
that an extra undocumented \0 is necessary after the parameter 
name/value pairs.  Or at least that is what I needed to get a successful 
connection.  So when I tried to send: "user\0test\0database\0test\0" 
with a message length of 32 (4+4+24) I got the error "invalid startup 
packet layout: expected terminator as last byte", however if I send 
"user\0test\0database\0test\0\0" with a message length of 33, then it 
works.  Is this a doc bug, or a code problem?

2)
In looking at the ParameterStatus messages that I am getting back from 
the server, I have a question about the value being returned for 
datestyle.  Since I am in the process of converting to the new protocol, 
I am still sending a query that issues a "set datestyle to 'ISO'".  The 
ParameterStatus response I get from this query is: "DateStyle\0ISO with 
US (NonEuropean) conventions".  I would have expected "DateStyle\0ISO".     It appears that the value reported by
ParameterStatusisn't 
 
actually a valid value, since if you try to issue a set datestyle to 
'ISO with US (NonEuropean) conventions' you get an error message.  So my 
question is how does one parse the value of the datestyle parameter?  It 
appears (although I haven't verified) that the value will change 
depending on language since I am assuming the words 'with' and 
'conventions' will be translated.  I would have expected that set and 
show would use the same set of possible values.

thanks,
--Barry

PS.  Tom, since your spam filter blocks my email, I can't send directly 
to you, thus I need to CC the hackers list.  Can you whitelist me? Or is 
it OK to continue sending these questions to the hackers list?