ietf-nntp LISTGROUP claims to require LIST be done first

Russ Allbery rra at stanford.edu
Thu Jul 5 01:57:14 PDT 2001


Section 9.5.1.1 (LISTGROUP) currently contains the somewhat odd statement:

    The group name MUST match a newsgroup obtained from the LIST command
    or an error will result, else the server will respond with the 411
    error code.

I don't think this paragraph is necessary (there is no similar paragraph
in the description of the GROUP command).  At most, it should just say:

    If the specified group name is not available from the server, the
    server will respond with the 411 error code.

(and if that much is said, the same thing should also be said under the
GROUP command).  The current wording implies that the client is required
to send a LIST command and make sure that the desired group is in that
list or it would be violating the protocol ("MUST match").  On the
contrary, specifying an invalid group is a perfectly valid thing to do in
the NNTP protocol; it just results in a 411 response.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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