spf-discuss
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RE: SPF Validation Tools - Yet Another One

2005-07-08 11:42:06
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
[mailto:owner-spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com]On Behalf Of Alex 
van den
Bogaerdt
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 5:34 AM
To: spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [spf-discuss] SPF Validation Tools - Yet Another One


On Thu, Jul 07, 2005 at 05:19:30PM -0500, wayne wrote:

I really don't think we want to go into this area in the spec.

Agreed.  I want to close this (sub)thread as it is too much talk
for too little gain.

The important part of my objection:

On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 12:02:26AM -0700, Greg Connor wrote:
Whatever. The point is: it is not necessarily a bad mechanism.

The error message for "*all" suggests a bad mechanism which
could indicate to the unwary that "*" is valid and "all" is not.

Totally right.  "*all" is not a modifier, mechanism, or qualifier.

At first, I thought the spec could be improved to catch this but
you've convinced me it cannot.  I'm still convinced however that
the tool _can_ be improved.  Let's focus on that.

I'm a bit busy just now with other things, but I do plan on making a change
for this.  This error is produced by the underlying pyspf library.

What it does today is as it processes each mechanism/modifier, it eats the
+, -, ?, ~ off of the string to determine if the mechanism/modifier gives a
non-default result (it does process left to right as someone speculated) and
if none of those are found, it uses the default (Pass) result if the
mechanism/modifier matches.  Since * isn't one of those items, *all gets
flagged as an unknown mechanism/modifier.

What I intend to do when I get a minute is to write a patch for pyspf that
once the unknown mechanism error is about to be raised will eat one more
character off and see if it turns it into a valid mechanism/modifier.  If it
does, I'll throw a different kind of error.

Scott K