[39] in Kerberos_V5_Development
Quoting issues
amgreene@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (amgreene@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Jan 15 18:19:01 1990
I was discussing this with Jay after the meeting, and we came up
with a few points:
1. Backslashes. We had initially rejected using \ as a quoting
character because of all the problems with having to double or
quadruple it when one wants quoted backslashes. However, this
is a known problem with other systems, and a caveat saying, in
effect, "The usual backslash problems exist" ought to be suf-
ficient. At least we'll be consistent with most other systems.
2. Realms. Currently, we've been discussing names of the form
component/component/component/.../component@realm. This permits
components to be null. But what does a null "principle" mean?
That is, a name like /root? I would suggest that, by analogy to
Unix filenames, names beginning with a slash be taken to be
"absolute," i.e., unambiguous in the Kerberos world; while names
beginning with a letter be "relative" to the current (default)
realm. Thus, amgreene/root would be my root instance in the
current realm (probably athena), while /soup.mit.edu/qjb/root
would be Jay's root instance in the soup realm.
This eliminates the special charcater @, and merely shifts the
analogy from mail addresses to [Unix] filenames. It would have
the possible advantage of parallelism between homedir names and
Kerberos principles, in that <name> could be appended to <homedirs>
(e.g., /mit/qjb) or to <krbrealm> (e.g., /athena.mit.edu/qjb)
[I'm using Jay because his username is shorter than mine. :-) ]
These are two separate suggestions, and should be discussed (flamed?)
as such.
