[1092] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Does this violate RFC1123 ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rob Janssen reading Linux mailingl)
Sun Sep 10 23:13:48 1995
From: linux@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen reading Linux mailinglist)
To: almesber@lrc.epfl.ch (Werner Almesberger)
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 1995 13:47:51 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu, hjl@nynexst.com
In-Reply-To: <199509071749.TAA22262@lrc.epfl.ch> from "Werner Almesberger" at Sep 7, 95 07:49:02 pm
Reply-To: linux-vger@wab-tis.rabobank.nl
According to Werner Almesberger:
> I've found a nice academic problem: If I type
>
> $ telnet 10.010.010.0x10
>
> under Linux with libc 4.6.27, I get
>
> Trying 10.8.8.16 ...
>
> Now, does this violate section 2.1 of RFC1123 or not ? I think it probably
> should go to DNS because of the "x". 010.010.010.010 is even less clear.
>
> (Oh, and we shouldn't feel too bad about this - almost every other system
> under the sun does the same thing, be it SysVish, BSDish or non-UNIX, e.g.
> UCX on VMS.)
Yes, although the notation #.#.#.# is always referred to as "dotted decimal",
many implementations actually implement it as "dotted C-numerical".
I think this does not serve any good purpose, and only confuses those
people that have tried to align addresses in neat columns, like:
100.200.100.001
...
100.200.100.009
100.200.100.010
...
100.200.100.099
100.200.100.100
When you don't know the C language you will have a *very hard* time finding
out why this does not work, especially as many implementations will just
accept the wrong values and convert them using some broken algorithm...
There would have been some use for a "binary" notation, but interestingly
enough *that* is not implemented...
I would say, the octal and hex conversions do not conform to RFC1123 and
other documents referring to "dotted decimal", and should be removed.
However, that may cause some confusion on systems that now work and stop
working after that change...
Rob
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