> It clearly says that a "name" may contain periods, which delimit > "components", and it disallows "single character names", not "single > character components". > > Curiously, it forbids hostnames that end in a dot, and RFC 1034 says > that domain names that name hosts should follow the rules for HOSTS.TXT > (RFC 952), but also says that full (absolute) domain names end in a dot.
RFC 1034 provides a mechanism to express whether a domainname is fully qualified or not. The is no such mechanism with hostnames. When you map a hostname into the DNS (presentation format) you append the period when you map back from the DNS you remove it. Nothing strange here. Your problem is that you think RFC 1034 / RFC 1035 have anything to do with defining what is a valid hostname. RFC 1034 / RFC 1035 define a distributed database. There is a well known mapping from hostnames into keys in that database that just might have associated address records. Just as there is a well known mapping from IP addresses to keys in that database that just might have PTR records whose content might just map back into a hostname. Mark > > AMC -- Mark Andrews, Internet Software Consortium 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
