btw for my MUA i have written a netrc parser that is (then,
loosely) based upon NetBSD's ftp parser. The source can be shrunk
massively from the 16KB that is has (we offer interactive commands
to load, show, etc). It was converted to use a dictionary, but
the thing as such is pretty straightforward and decade(s) (s with
NetBSD) old. Documentation is quite well and covers variants as
i know them:
The .netrc file
User credentials for machine accounts (see URL syntax and credential
lookup†) can be placed in the .netrc file, which will be loaded and
cached when requested by netrc-lookup†. The default location ˜/.netrc†
may be overridden by the NETRC† environment variable. As long as syntax
constraints are honoured the file source may be replaced with the output
of the shell command set in netrc-pipe†, to load an encrypted file, for
example. The cache can be managed with the command netrc†.
The file consists of space, tabulator or newline separated tokens. This
parser implements a superset of the original BSD syntax, but users should
nonetheless be aware of portability glitches, shall their .netrc be us‐
able across multiple programs and platforms:
• BSD only supports double quotation marks, for example ‘password "pass
with spaces"’.
• BSD (only?) supports escaping of single characters via a reverse
solidus (a space could be escaped via ‘\ ’), in- as well as outside
of a quoted string. This method is assumed to be present, and will
actively be used to quote double quotation marks ‘"’ and reverse
solidus ‘\’ characters inside the login and password tokens, for ex‐
ample for display purposes.
• BSD does not require a final quotation mark of the last user input
token.
• The original BSD (Berknet) parser also supported a format which al‐
lowed tokens to be separated with commas – whereas at least Hewlett-
Packard still seems to support this syntax, this parser does not!
• As a non-portable extension some widely-used programs support shell-
style comments: if an input line starts, after any amount of white‐
space, with a number sign ‘#’, then the rest of the line is ignored.
• Whereas other programs may require that the .netrc file is accessible
by only the user if it contains a password token for any other login
than “anonymous”, this parser will always require these strict per‐
missions.
Of the following list of supported tokens this parser uses (and caches)
machine, login and password. An existing default entry will not be used.
machine name
The hostname of the entries’ machine, lowercase-normalized be‐
fore use. Any further file content, until either end-of-file
or the occurrence of another machine or a default first-class
token is bound (only related) to the machine name.
As an extension that should not be the cause of any worries
this parser supports a single wildcard prefix for name:
machine *.example.com login USER password PASS
machine pop3.example.com login USER password PASS
machine smtp.example.com login USER password PASS
which would match ‘xy.example.com’ as well as
‘pop3.example.com’, but neither ‘example.com’ nor
‘local.smtp.example.com’. In the example neither
‘pop3.example.com’ nor ‘smtp.example.com’ will be matched by
the wildcard, since the exact matches take precedence (it is
however faster to specify it the other way around).
default This is the same as machine except that it is a fallback entry
that is used shall none of the specified machines match; only
one default token may be specified, and it must be the last
first-class token.
login name
The user name on the remote machine.
password string
The user’s password on the remote machine.
account string
Supply an additional account password. This is merely for FTP
purposes.
macdef name
Define a macro. A macro is defined with the specified name; it
is formed from all lines beginning with the next line and con‐
tinuing until a blank line is (consecutive newline characters
are) encountered. (Note that macdef entries cannot be utilized
by multiple machines, too, but must be defined following the
machine they are intended to be used with.) If a macro named
init exists, it is automatically run as the last step of the
login process. This is merely for FTP purposes.
This is covered by tests. Last Coverity errors fixed on
2020-01-04, no user bugs/wishes since 2016-05-10, when we added
comment support due to
I'd assumed they are accepted netrc syntax since fetchmail,
lftp, ftp, msmtp and other network applications I use haven't
ever complained about them.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
