Re: [yang-doctors] Definition for base64

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 10:46:55AM -0700, Mahesh Jethanandani wrote:
> I have a protocol (Babel) that defines router-id as a base64 string of 8 octets. I could define it as a string, but isn’t it the case that base64 includes only a set of printable characters defined by the regex below? Not all printable characters are included in the set.

RFC 6126 section 4.1.2 says:

4.1.2.  Router-Id

   A router-id is an arbitrary 8-octet value.  Router-ids SHOULD be
   assigned in modified EUI-64 format [ADDRARCH].

Where does it say that it is a string on 8 octets base64? Note, if you
use binary with length of 8, you actually get a base64 encoding on the
wire. But then there might be another doument that says the router-id
is to rendered as base64 but then the base64 string obviously is
longer than 8 octets. If you work off the information model, then I
might understand that you are confused because
draft-ietf-babel-information-model-03 says:

   base64      An opaque array of bytes.

What is that? Does this mean a base64 encoded opaque array of bytes?
Or something else? I would check how babel people and implementors
prefer to represent router-ids in textual format. Do they really
want trailing characters?

  import base64
  print(base64.b64encode(bytes(8)))

Gives me:

  b'AAAAAAAAAAA='

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
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