Re: [netmod] 6021 ipv4-prefix

[Randy Presuhn <[e-mail]>]

Hi -

On 4/30/2019 1:46 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
...
> Is it generally ok that the canonical value potentially represents a
> different bit field/value than what the client sent?
...

The *value* represented is the same.  The sequences of bytes used
to represent that value may be different.  Some information sent
by the client may be extraneous to the *value*.  Consider the case
of currency values entered into some application.  A robust application
won't care whether I enter $1,234,567.89 or 1234567.89 and if it
subsequently chooses to display it as "1.234.567,89 USD" I can't
complain that the value is different, even though several bytes of
my input have clearly been discarded.

This situation is hardly unique to netconf. I recall coding
for such situations forty years ago.  It has been a fact of life
throughout the history of ASN.1 and especially BER. It will continue
to be a consideration at least as long as folks feel the need to
support "human readable" representations on input.  Frankly,
I was surprised that anyone was surprised by this.

Randy