Circa 2001-Feb-20 09:17:49 +0000 dixit Philip Hazel:
: On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
:
: > The concern about "-" is that it might look like a number range. Now I
: > know that a range of IP addresses makes no sense in that context, we are
: > trying to avoid ambiguity.
:
: You are right. :-(
:
:
: On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Paul Walsh wrote:
:
: > How about some other character to delimit IP address and port?
: >
: > exim -bh 1.2.3.4~9876
: >
: > exim -bh 1.2.3.4^9876
: >
: > exim -bh 1.2.3.4_9876
: >
: > exim -bh 1.2.3.4=9876
:
: Oh, they all have problems, don't they? It's a pity that "." is not
: liked, because I still believe that that has the least problems in the
: long run.
:
: Maybe by the time Exim 4 comes out there will be a standard? I don't
: suppose I'll be that lucky...
Okay ... i have a solution:
(1) Use parentheses '(' and ')' to delimit the port number from a
host address or name. The has the following advantages over any
other proposed solution thus far:
- Works with IPv4 addresses: 127.0.0.1(465)
- Works with IPv6 addresses: dead::beef(25)
- Works with hostnames: mad.cows.com(22025)
- Uses only one more character than current usage, as opposed
to two with " p=".
- Human-readable
- Program-readable
- No one uses this syntax yet, so no favorites anointed or toes
stepped on.
(2) In addition, where it is required to list a range of port
numbers, use a sequence of two dots (periods, full stops) to
delimit the beginning and ending numbers of the port range:
127.0.0.1(0..1023)
(3) Recruit someone to write a standards-track RFC explaining why
everyone should this syntax for referring to
IP-address+port-number pairs.
--
jim knoble | jmknoble@??? |
http://www.jmknoble.cx/
