[NNTP] [2508] LIST capability handling

Charles Lindsey chl at clerew.man.ac.uk
Wed Dec 1 03:35:54 PST 2004


In <20041130093351.GB39877 at finch-staff-1.thus.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>ACTIVE.TIMES, if provided, always accepts a wildmat. DISTRIB.PATS, again if
>provided, never does. However, there's an arbitrary number of further
>keywords that servers could provide, not documented in this specification.
>For any given keyword, does it accept a wildmat or not? Does LIST XTRA.DATA?
>What about LIST PRIVATE.GROUPS? Or LIST CHARGED.GROUPS?

>Obviously, there's no way for this to be specified ahead of time. So do we
>make clients suck it and see, or do we provide the information in the
>CAPABILITIES output?

If the LIST FOOBAR command exists (as evidenced by the CAPABILITIES), it
is still the case that no client is going to issue it without knowing what
is means, which it can only discover by reading (or having its implementor
read) the RFC (or private communication) that introduced the FOOBAR
extension. But that RFC (or whatever) will already have explained the
syntax, including the applicability of wildmats.

The only exception is some private individual telneting to port 119 out of
curiosity, and that individual it quite capable of experimenting and
deducing what is allowed by observing the return codes.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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