On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 11:43:10PM +0100, Jonas Carlsson wrote: > Though, i must ask, howcome this is unlikely to be changed? Eventhough a > small matter, it seems to me > that this is going against all logic, simplicity and usability, things > I've found being characteristic for (the rest > of) OpenBSD.
This part of the syntax comes from IPFilter, so the reasons are historical and changing it will require a lot of people to change a lot of rule sets (and tools that generate rule sets). So you'll have to explain how the benefits outweigh the manhours spent. Then, people will not agree whether 10:20 or 10><20 is prettier, and further variations will be suggested. 10:20 is actually 9><21. 10<>20 would be odd at best for redirections. If you replace a:b with a><b in the from/to port part of the rdr rule, what syntax do you use for the replacement port (the one after the arrow)? 'a><b -> a:*' seems inconsistent, too. So, a><*? There's more stuff like that around the corner. The code change within pf is trivial, reaching a strong consensus probably not. It's hardly a severe problem, so the energy might be better spent elsewhere. ;) Daniel
