[ietf-nntp] authinfo-02 changes

[Ken Murchison]

Clive D. W. Feather wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> In message <410538C4.3090508 at oceana.com>, Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com>
> writes
> 
>>>>+username = 1*(P-CHAR / SP / TAB)
>>>>+password = 1*(P-CHAR / SP / TAB)
>>>>+initial-response = base64-opt
>>>
>>>  This syntax isn't compatible with the general command syntax.
>>>Instead,
>>>you want:
>>>    username = user-pass-word *(WS user-pass-word)
>>>   password = user-pass-word *(WS user-pass-word)
>>>   user-pass-word = 1*P-CHAR
>>> This makes it clearer that the username/password can be treated as a
>>>string
>>>of words and that no special parsing is needed.
>>
>>I'm not sure that I understand/appreciate the difference here, but I'll
>>make the change if nobody else objects.
> 
> 
> It's a fairly subtle point, but basically what my syntax says is:
> - - the command line is made up of words separated by white space, and
> - - the username is made up of those words after "USER";
> while your syntax says:
> - - the username is those characters after "USER".

Yes, I think this what we want.  It might not be very useful for USER, 
but people may want a leading/trailing space in their password,


> 
> Suppose I use _ to represent space. Then your syntax implies that:
>     AUTHINFO_USER_fred_flintstone
>     AUTHINFO_USER_fred__flintstone
> are different and must be distinguished, whereas mine doesn't - it
> implies the user name is "fred" followed by "flintstone". Secondly, my
> syntax makes it clear that:
>     AUTHINFO_PASS_secret
>     AUTHINFO_PASS_secret_
>     AUTHINFO_PASS__secret
>     AUTHINFO_PASS__secret_
> are all equivalent (the password is "secret") while yours has a parsing
> ambiguity: is the second space after PASS, or the trailing space, part
> of the passwords or not?

I believe each of these should be different.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
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