Re: [netmod] [Technical Errata Reported] RFC6020 (4911)

[Martin Bjorklund <[e-mail]>]

RFC Errata System <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The following errata report has been submitted for RFC6020,
> "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for the Network Configuration
> Protocol (NETCONF)".
> 
> --------------------------------------
> You may review the report below and at:
> http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=6020&eid=4911
> 
> --------------------------------------
> Type: Technical
> Reported by: Ladislav Lhotka <[e-mail]>
> 
> Section: 6.1.3
> 
> Original Text
> -------------
> Within a double-quoted string (enclosed within " "), a backslash
> character introduces a special character, which depends on the
> character that immediately follows the backslash:
> 
>  \n      new line
>  \t      a tab character
>  \"      a double quote
>  \      a single backslash
> 
> 
> Corrected Text
> --------------
> Within a double-quoted string (enclosed within " "), a backslash
> character introduces a special character, which depends on the
> character that immediately follows the backslash:
> 
>  \n      new line
>  \t      a tab character
>  \"      a double quote
>  \      a single backslash
> 
> The backslash MUST NOT be followed by any other character.
> 
> Notes
> -----
> The text doesn't state whether other characters may follow the
> backslash, and if yes, what it means. Existing implementations have
> used three approaches:
> 
> 1. report an error if another character follows the backslash
> 2. keep only the character following the backslash, i.e., for example,
> "\x" is the same as "x".
> 3. keep both the backslash and the character following it.
> 
> This ambiguity is undesirable and YANG 1.1 [RFC 7950] explicitly
> adopted option #1. However, many modules are still being written using
> YANG version 1.0, so it is important to clarify this issue in RFC 6020
> as well.

I don't think this errata should be accepted.  As stated, the spec is
unclear, and YANG 1.1 has fixed this problem.  But it is not clear
that the original intention when RFC 6020 was written was #1.
Accepting this errata now would make existing implementations and
modules invalid.

The solution moving forward is to use YANG 1.1.


/martin