On 3/9/18 9:35 AM, Acee Lindem (acee) wrote:
As the editor of RFC 8294, I can confirm that we did not reach
consensus on whether to use easily understandable regular expressions
versus regular expressions that precisely validate the input string.
During the protracted Working Group last call for this document, there
were strong proponents of both lines of thinking. Given that we had
started with the more complex precise regular expressions, that is
what was retained (e.g., for BGP route-targets).
Okay, this is helpful input.
I raised the issue because rfc6087bis appears to be designed as a style
guide. Having reviewed several YANG modules and seeing somewhat varied
philosophies in this regard, it seemed like a prime candidate for
including in such a guide, and I brought it up only because it was
conspicuous by its absence. I wasn't intending to express a preference
for one end of the spectrum or the other; I simply thought it was
something that belonged in the document.
I can't determine from the conversation so far whether the discussions
on rfc6087bis explicitly included this topic and decided not to cover
it, or whether it was simply not brought up. However, the quoted text
above tells me that reaching a quick consensus by the community of
interest on the topic is pretty unlikely. Consequently, including such
guidance probably means that the working group will need to have
additional conversations about what such guidance would say. I'll leave
it to the responsible AD to determine whether the document should go
back to the working group for explicit consideration of this topic, or
whether it should move forward without any guidance on the topic of
regex completelness-versus-simplicity trade-offs.
/a
_______________________________________________
netmod mailing list
netmod@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod
