[art] Question regarding RFC 6570

[Peter Occil <[e-mail]>]

(Sorry, I meant to send this message to the ART mailing list.)

It seems that the URI Templates document (RFC 6570) doesn't sufficiently clarify the behavior with variable values with well-formed pct-encoded components.

Take the following variable names and their values:

  pctat2 := "a%42"
  pctat3 := "ab%43"
  pctat0 := "%42ab"

For the purpose of variable expansion, are valid pct-encoded components in the variable value first decoded before appending the string?  (The only example in the document with "%", "half", included an ill-formed pct-encoded component.) And given the definitions above, how are the following templates expanded?

  {pctat2}

  {pctat2:2}

  {pctat2:3}

  {pctat2:4}

  {pctat3:3}

  {pctat3:4}

  {pctat0:1}

  {pctat0:2}

  {pctat0:3}

(For example, is the first template given expanded to "aB" or "a%42"?  Is the second template expanded to "a", "aB", "a%42", "a%", or something else?)