IPv6 address/port format

[Dancer]

Nathan Dorfman wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 06:15:36PM +0000, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 01:26:10PM +0100, MARAY Tamas wrote:
> > >Wrong. Conflicts with the UNIX shell.
> >
> > There are multiple UNIX shells, or at least multiple shells in
> > use on UNIX (and UNIX-like) systems. I don't know if this conflicts
> > with all of them, but I doubt it. Your argument is valid, but no
> > matter which standard we choose, we will run into conflicts. We'll
> > just have to find out how to minimize those conflicts.
>
> [ and ] are metacharacters in the POSIX-specified standard Unix shell;
> as well as bash, bash2, ksh, csh, tcsh and zsh. Since this list
> comprises something like 99% of all Unix shells used, characters
> marked as reserved by *all* of them are a really bad choice.

Many characters defined as acceptable in URL's are in some way magic or
special to shells.

Examples include, but are not limited to: ; ? * '  &

That means that when feeding some URL's to tools (like wget) you already have
to escape them (with \ or by wrapping them in quotes).

Realistically, I don't think entering a URI at shell level with an embedded
numeric V6 address is going to be all that common. Nor, do I think that it
comprises any more or less care with character escapes than existing URL
grammar already requires.

D