[db-wg] "status:" attribute values in the RIPE database

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 4:48 PM Ronald F. Guilmette via db-wg
<db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:

[...]

> P.S.  It also complicates parsing... rather needlessly in my view...
> to have some field values optionally followed by commentary text
> beginning with #.  I can't remember now if this was only a problem
> I saw with respect to the APNIC data base, or if this sickness has
> also infected some RIPE WHOIS records, but if RIPE allows it, I wish
> you wouldn't.
>
> One other small parsing annoyance:  Continuation lines. I only saw a
> single instance of this and only in the APNIC WHOIS data base, but
> it was quite annoying.  There was/is a continued line / field value
> that looked like this:
>
> inetnum:    A1.B1.C1.D1 -
>                 A2.B2.C2.D2
>
> My parser wasn't expecting THAT!

These and the case insensitivity are all features defined in RFC 2280
and carried over into its successors. Databases that implement RPSL
are likely to have implemented these features as they are part of the
specification.

To be fair to the authors, there were fewer than 150m Internet users
in the world when that original specification was published. Things
probably looked quite different!

Regards,

Leo