Re: [AVTCORE] Review of draft-ietf-avtcore-rfc5764-mux-fixes-02

[Paul Kyzivat <[e-mail]>]

On 9/25/15 6:33 AM, Marc Petit-Huguenin wrote:
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> Hi Paul,
>
> On 09/18/2015 10:17 AM, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>> On 9/17/15 4:10 PM, Marc Petit-Huguenin wrote:
>>
>>>> K. Section 3:
>>>>
>>>> When new values or ranges are added, they MUST be tested in
>>>> ascending order.
>>>>
>>>
>>> This text should not talk about adding new values/ranges. Changed
>>> the text to:
>>>
>>> "The various range values for the first byte MUST be tested in
>>> ascending order."
>>
>> I just reviewed this, and I have no idea what it means. I see nothing
>> about Figure 3 that requires testing to be done in a particular
>> order. The *text* suggests an if/then/else or switch statement
>> implementation. But the code generated for a switch statement may
>> well be a lookup table and so have no particular ordering.
>>
>> The only time ordering would matter would be if the ranges
>> overlapped. And IIUC the goal here that the ranges *not* overlap.
>
> The reason we added this was to plan when a new overlapping range is added (mostly because someone ignored the advices provided by this draft).  If the algorithm says today that range must be checked in ascending order, then *all* implementations will work (or, most likely, fail) in a similar way.  That sentence is meant to explicitly prevent using a lookup table or perfect hashing or whatever technique that would prevent things to fail identically everywhere.
>
> That said the sentence can probably be improved.

Yes.

Do you consider overlapping ranges to be an error, and want the error to 
be handled deterministically? Or are you thinking that there may be 
overt changes that legally define overlapping ranges and want to make 
the meaning deterministic?

If there is a deterministic choice when ranges overlap, then that seems 
to effectively update one of the ranges so that they don't overlap.

	Thanks,
	Paul