Re: [Idr] Lars Eggert's No Objection on draft-ietf-idr-rfc7752bis-14: (with COMMENT)

[Lars Eggert <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Feb 17, 2023, at 13:54, Ketan Talaulikar <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > ```
> >      To compare NLRIs with unknown TLVs, all TLVs within the NLRI MUST be
> >      ordered in ascending order by TLV Type.  If there are multiple TLVs
> >      of the same type within a single NLRI, then the TLVs sharing the same
> >      type MUST be in ascending order based on the value field.  Comparison
> >      of the value fields is performed by treating the entire field as
> >      opaque binary data and ordered lexicographically.
> > ```
...
> KT2> Are you suggesting that the description in the text is insufficient? I am not sure if a Wikipedia article would fly as a (in this case normative?) reference.

Yes, I think you need to say something more, because the current text says

1. order TLVs by type
2. if there are multiple TLVs of the same type, order them by value
3. to order by value, order lexicographically

My point is that in step 3, the values may be of different lengths, and so you need to say what *kind* of lexicographic order you intend (= shortlex).

You don't need to cite Wikipedia, you could also just require that values are first compare solely by length and lexicographically when the lengths are equal.

Lars