GNU bug report logs - #22081
24.5; netrc.el fails parsing authinfo items spread over multiple lines

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From: Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton <at> gmail.com>
To: 22081 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#22081: 24.5; netrc.el fails parsing authinfo items spread over multiple lines
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2015 09:35:22 +0000

On Mon 07 Dec 2015, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

> On Mon, 07 Dec 2015 14:14:13 +0000 Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton <at> gmail.com> wrote: 
>
> AM> On Sat 05 Dec 2015, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
>>> On Fri, 04 Dec 2015 14:25:00 +0000 Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton <at> gmail.com> wrote: 
>>> My more important point was that there's no standard (or library) for
>>> parsing netrc files. In particular, quoting is not specified as I
>>> mentioned. The BSD spec is ambiguous and allowing multi-line entries
>>> would not serve any practical purpose.
>
> AM> The spec clearly defines that tokens are separated with SPACE TAB or
> AM> NEWLINE, which seems unambiguous to me.
>
> Without a quoting standard, it's not clear whether strings inside quotes
> can be multiline and whether the newline itself can be escaped.

The original spec is archaic - there is no quoting standard, only tokens
separated by whitespace. As such, a quote is simply another character.

> AM> Disallowing NEWLINE as a token separator means you are not parsing an
> AM> extension of the existing format, but something incompatible with it.
> AM> That's fine as it offers useful features, but it should use a different
> AM> file name to make it clear that it is not the same format.
>
> Fortunately `auth-sources' defaults to ~/.authinfo and ~/.authinfo.gpg
> before ~/.netrc right now.

Indeed.

    AndyM

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