Danny Mayer wrote:
Kevin Darcy wrote:
But, as far as I can tell, there's no *practical* reason to disallow
underscores, other than the fact that it may trip the standards-checking
code of some _other_ piece of software. So, piece of software A
disallows underscores because it's worried about causing a problem for
piece of software B, and piece of software B keeps the restriction
because it's worried about about causing a problem for piece of software
C, and piece of software C keeps the restriction because it's worried
about causing a problem for piece of software A.
I had a case a year or two ago where a system had a host name with an
underscore in it and as a result it was unable to make a number of
connections. I don't remember the details any more but removing the
underscore solved the problem. It was running Windows which is why it
was allowed to get that hostname in the first place. It was easier for
me to point to the RFC's to get the sysadmins to change it than to
figure out what was causing it to trip up and fail. There are too many
failure paths.
Yes, but by the same "too many failure paths" logic, we could never get
rid of any obsolete restrictions ever. It's all very well to take the
path of least resistance when the standards have a good reason for
existing. But when that reason goes away, the standards should change
and the implementation and operations should follow.
At a certain point, you have to say "time to move on", we don't use
crude teletypes any more, underscores really aren't inherently a
problem; they're only an interoperability problem when talking to
systems that cling slavishly to the relevant standard. Maybe a few
things will break here and there in the transition, that's why there are
things like patches and updates and pre-production testing. The end
result of the change is more flexibility and interoperability.
A standard that just sits and rots because everyone is afraid to change
it, is a standard that is not serving its purpose, and once you get too
many of those, people start looking at whole new paradigms. Witness the
obsolence of OSI and SNA and the ascendance of TCP/IP. Learn from
history. People were attracted to TCP/IP because it was more dynamic and
flexible than what preceded it. We're in danger of losing that.
- Kevin
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