Re: [http-state] Is this an omission in the parser rules of draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-21?

[Adam Barth <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Roy T. Fielding <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Feb 4, 2011, at 10:51 AM, Adam Barth wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Remy Lebeau <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>> Subject: Re: [http-state] Is this an omission in the parser rules of
>>> draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-21?
>>> From: Adam Barth
>>> Date: Fri, February 04, 2011 10:19 am
>>> To: Remy Lebeau
>>> Cc: [e-mail]
>>>
>>>> The draft gives user agents precise
>>>> instructions for how to parse all
>>>> manner of cookies, including cookies with
>>>> values that contain quote characters. That
>>>> information is contained in Section 5
>>>
>>> I have re-read Section 5 and I do not see its grammar or parsing rules
>>> accounting for quoted-string values at all. It only says to remove WSP
>>> characters surrounding extracted names and values, and quote characters
>>> are not part of the WSP definition. So what am I missing? Where exactly
>>> does it say how to unquote a quoted-string used in attribute values?
>>
>> Precisely.  It does not say to unquote a quoted-string because that's
>> not how cookies work.  The role of the quote character is cookies is
>> identical to the role of the "!" character.  That is, neither play a
>> special role in the protocol.  Any representations by the contrary by
>> 2109 or any other document are fiction and have only caused pain and
>> misery in the world.
>
> That may be, but the grammar for server generation of set-cookie
> values is clearly wrong because use of DQUOTE in cookie values is
> common (roughly 10% of the values in my browser cookie store) and
> previously defined, even if we consider DQUOTE to be part of the
> value string.  Let's just change the generating grammar for value to
> match how cookies are actually parsed and only exclude characters
> that are known to cause failures.

The grammar is not used for parsing.  Parsing is defined in Section 5,
not Section 4.

Adam