Bug in signature length?

I've just been updating my signature and noticed something that I think is a bug.  The maximum length is 255 characters but it appears to count formatting codes as well.  This seems silly to me.  Why should wrapping some text in bold tags add an extra 7 characters to the signature?

Because the limit is on the textbox where you enter the signature in your profile. Everything in there is text as far as it is concerned. It has no way to know the difference between text that happens to be a formatting tag versus text that is not.

I understand but surely it can't be hard to add some code that parses the text?  Why would anyone put things like Bold tags in their sig unless it was for formatting purposes?

I would consider that like saying that HTML format tags should not count toward the overall size of an HTML file. Surely no one would put them there except for formatting. Regardless it is an arbitrary limit on the size of the string. The string must be stored as a complete string in the database because the parsing is done when the page is rendered. Not when you store the string. So, if there were some way to not count formatting tags in the allowed size, that means that if I took humbrage with the site, all I would need to do is to keep adding tags to my signature until I eventually overflowed the allowed storage size in the DB where the signature is stored. You are essentially dealing with HTML here. The code tags are simply text just like the content of the sig. They have to be stored in the DB just like the content. They take up space in the DB just like the content. So they count toward the allowable storage limit just like the content.