Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 18:27:49 -0400 From: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM> To: Glenn Chisholm <glenn@ircache.net> Cc: Evren Yurtesen <yurtesen@ispro.net.tr>, Bill Fumerola <billf@jade.chc-chimes.com>, Michael Mannsberger <mannsber@starmedia.net>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: (2) hey Message-ID: <199908122227.SAA87677@whizzo.transsys.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:15:05 MDT." <Pine.BSF.4.05.9908121608310.280-100000@abalaea.ircache.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9908121608310.280-100000@abalaea.ircache.net>
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> > Well, I am the person who has this problem. > > The RFCs does not explicitly say that we should not use underscore > > character > > as far as I understood. But it suggests which characters we should use. > > > RFC 952 > > 1. A "name" (Net, Host, Gateway, or Domain name) is a text string up > to 24 characters drawn from the alphabet (A-Z), digits (0-9), minus > sign (-), and period (.). Note that periods are only allowed when > they serve to delimit components of "domain style names". > > RFC 1101 > > The current syntax for network names, as defined by [RFC 952] is an > alphanumeric string of up to 24 characters, which begins with an > alpha, and may include "." and "-" except as first and last > characters. This is the format which was also used for host names > before the DNS. Upward compatibility with existing names might be a > goal of any new scheme. > > The above two documents limit the characters that may be used a a _ is not > one of them. FreeBSD behaves correctly in this manner. But the DNS is used to hold all sorts of information. For example, how do you reconcile domain names like: 42.10.202.144.IN-ADDR.ARPA in the DNS? It violates the "starts with alpha" "requirement" in 952 and 1101 that you quotes, yet we use these things all the time. In fact, you can send email to that domain name because it has an A record associated with it, as well as a PTR record. I've always thought that the code that barfs on these names in gethostbyname() really violates the "be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you receive" thought that made the Internet work. Yeah, yeah, BIND does it, but that's no excuse, either. What do I know; I was just the first chair of the domain name working group in the IETF so many years ago before it got fashionable. grumble, louie To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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