Thinking about a human-readable multi-line pubsub api for irc bots...

protocol.js

var EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter,
    util = require('util');

// TODO:
// * tags (BEGIN somehashhere\nsomehashhere data)
// * line numbers (begin somehash\nsomehash:12 data)

var Buffer = exports.Buffer = function (o) {
  o = o || {};

  this.buffer = [];
  this.buffering = false;
  this.name = o.name || 'bot';

  var self = this;
};

util.inherits(Buffer, EventEmitter);

Buffer.prototype.push = function (data) {

  var self = this;

  if (Buffer.isBuffer(data)) {
    data = data.toString();
  }
  else if (typeof data !== 'string') {
    try {
      data = String(data);
    }
    catch (e) {
      cb(e);
    }
  }

  data.split('\n').forEach(function (line) {
    if (self.buffer.length === 0) {
      if (line.match(new RegExp('^'+self.name+': '))) {
        self.buffer.push(line);
        if (line.match(/BEGIN$/)) {
          self.buffering = true;
        }
      }
    }
    else if (self.buffering) {
      self.buffer.push(line);
      if (line.match(/END$/)) {
        self.buffering = false;
      }
    }

    if (!self.buffering) {
      self.emit('data', self.buffer.join('\n'));
      self.buffer = [];
    }

  });
}