Ending a TXT record with a backslash?

MURTARI, JOHN jm5903 at att.com
Tue May 30 19:04:17 UTC 2017


Folks,
                Recently had an issue with someone who wanted this for a TXT record:

murt2 IN TXT  "path=\";

                Now, not sure wny they wanted it - maybe the root directory in Windows???  But anyway,  BIND does not like it.

zone example.com/IN: loading from master file db.example.com failed: unbalanced quotes

                Of course, we could escape the backslash.  Which BIND then likes and the zone will load.  But a dig gives you:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
murt2.example.com.      83000   IN      TXT     "path=\\"

                Which isn't really the same thing?  Took a look at RFC1464 (Using DNS to Store Arbitrary String Attributes),  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1464,   read this:

   All printable ASCII characters are permitted in the attribute value.
   No characters need to be quoted with a "`".  In other words, the
   first unquoted equals sign in the TXT record is the name/value
   delimiter.  All subsequent characters are part of the value.

   Once again, note that in most implementations the backslash character
   is an active quoting character (and must, itself, be quoted).

                That last sentence really has me stuck!  Too many adjectives?  Are there 'inactive' quoting characters?

The RFC did have an example, but I couldn't work it out...

   Attribute    Attribute       Internal Form           External Form
   Name         Value           (server to resolver)    (TXT record)
   =            \=              `==\=                   "`==\\="

                Any suggestions are welcome & please excuse my attempts at humor above.
                Best regards!
John

----------------
John Murtari - jm5903 at att.com<mailto:jm5903 at att.com>
Ciberspring
office: 315-944-0998
cell: 315-430-2702

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