Re: RFC 2812 and ISON

[Kurt Roeckx <Q@xxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 10:21:24PM -0600, Sean McElroy wrote:
> Maybe I'm reading something wrong, but I don't understand how 'ISON' as
> defined in RFC 2812 4.9 complies with the maximum parameter limit (15) in
> RFC 2812 2.3. Since the example given in the RFC does not show a colon
> before the nick list (and it is not observed in recorded conversations
> between clients and servers), is the ISON specification not violating it's
> own RFC by allowing a nick list only limited in number by the message
> length? Or are nicks beyond 15 'against the standard' and okay to ignore?
> (If so that's troubling because mIRC does it...)
> 
> It seems to me that the RFC should require the ISON command to prefix the
> nick list with a colon. But maybe I'm missing something obvious or some
> syntactic trick - if so, please enlighten me. :)

ISON and USERHOST are really special cases.  they *should* have a
colon there, but for some reason doesn't have it.  For USERHOST
it however it says there is a limit of 5.

Ircd has always had this special case for ISON in the parser
where it said the limit to 1 instead of 15, having the effect
that it seems there is a colon before the first nick, and it
becomes 1 parameter, like it should have been.

With other words, it accecpts more than 15 nicks with or
without a colon before the first nick.

This doesn't change that there is something "broken" in the
protocol anyway.  It probably should say that servers MUST accept
both.  But I wouldn't want to specify that a client should send it
with a colon, since it might "break" every client.


Kurt