[patch] actsync rejects hannover._wichtig

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Florian,

> actsync rejects syncing newsgroups whose components start with '+', '-'
> or '_'. RFC5536 in section 3.1.4 states that these MUST be accepted by
> news servers (and innd does so), even though their use is reserved.
> Legacy group names such as hannover._wichtig are our current use case
> for this patch

OK, thanks for your patch.

I also changed another comment, arount line 1190:

-            * A '.' is ok as long as the next character is alphanumeric.
+            * A '.' is ok as long as the next character is alphanumeric
+            * or '+', '-', '_'.



> Note that this does not fix the case where the hierarchy name starts
> with one of these characters, as I'm unaware of any such hierarchy. If
> needed, backends/actsync.c:1142 would need to be amended accordingly.

Are you sure newsgroups with such names are rejected?
I read:

    /* must start with an alphanumeric ascii character */
    if (!isascii(name[0])) {
        return 1;
    }

It is isascii() and not isalnum() -- discrepancy in the comment...

Incidentally, I do not understand well the part of the code you changed:
couldn't isascii(*(p+1)) be removed because of isalnum((int)*(p+1)) just
afterwards?

-   if ((!num_chk || non_num) && isascii(*(p+1)) && isalnum((int)*(p+1))) {
+   if ((!num_chk || non_num) && isascii(*(p+1)) &&
+        (isalnum((int)*(p+1)) || *(p+1) == '+' || *(p+1) == '-' || *(p+1) == '_' )) {



> While looking around for how this is handled in other parts of INN, I
> wondered if newsgroups component syntax checking shouldn't be unified
> someplace?

It would be great, yes.
I will add your suggestion to our Trac.


> For example, actsync properly checks for all-numeric
> components, which would clash with tradspool article storage. A check in
> innd/cc.c:988 (CCnewgroup), which is supposedly trying to do the same,
> doesn't even catch 'ctlinnd newgroup 123.456.798'

One may wish to have such newsgroups in case he does not use tradspool.
It is only a SHOULD NOT in RFC 5536.

An newsgroup named microsoft.public.vb.6.webdevelopment exists in the
microsoft.* hierarchy.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

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