ietf-nntp Wildmats

Charles Lindsey chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk
Wed Nov 15 08:01:09 PST 2000


In <20001114110432.A53697 at demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>(3) If something is described as "a wildmat", does "xxx,yyy" match the
>single string "xxx,yyy" or does it match either of the strings "xxx" or
>"yyy" ? My understanding is the latter, but we need to revisit the
>terminology in each case that it occurs.

Personally, I would like comma to mean 'alternative', but I think our
previous discussions were not to do it. Andrew in particular was agin it
(though I don't think any present case would be affected, because ','
does not naturally arise in any of the places where wildmats are used).

However, if we decide to do PAT in an XPAT-like fashion, it gets more
complicate if ',' as 'alternative' gets introduced. A alternative would be
to introduce an explicit wildmats-separated-by-commas parameter in the
cases where it was to be allowed. NEWNEWS is the only one that does so at
present, but there are others where it would make natural sense.

>(4) Should backslash be allowed to remove the special status of characters
>other than the four listed ([ * ? and \), or only those four ? If so, which
>characters ? If not, how do I escape a comma ?

It does seem usual practice in other specs that backslashing things that
did not really need backslashing does the 'right thing'. Otherwise, you
have to remember a different set of rules for every editor-like system you
are using.

>(7) Is PAT supposed to have multiple arguments and, if so, how are they
>handled ?

Indeed. I intend to write on this.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 436 6131      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9     Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list