AS path regular expressions extension to ripe 181

In message <199506161659.AA28641 at cat.isi.edu>, Cengiz Alaettinoglu writes:
> 
> That is why we want the extensibility to be part of the language.

Bzzt.  Bogus advertising claim here.

Unless I'm mistaken, the extensibility you have built into RPSL is in
the area of actions.  If new pattern matching semantics were needed,
you'd have to change the language too.

For example, how would you add evaluation of lisp sexps passed by some
fancy new protocol?  This is equivalent to not having REs and someone
coming along and wanting to pass something that has to be matched
against an RE (though lisp sexp are a lot less likely).

Things which don't understand the new semantics are always not going
to give you a result.  The best you can do is arrange the syntax so
they come back with an "I don't know what to do with this" response,
which just tells you more politely that you need to upgrade than
a "syntax error in as-in network list at '<^690>'" message would.

Curtis



-------- Logged at  Mon Jun 19 22:51:26 MET DST 1995  ---------