Subject: (IPng 7342) The expression of IPv6 addresses.

From: せきやゆうじ/ Yuji SEKIYA <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 19:17:35 +0900

Hello, Bob.

In case of using IPv6 addresses for URLs or commands, we used to use [].
For example, http://[3ffe:501:100f:1000::1]:8080 .
However, we can't use [] in case of using scp6.

scp 3ffe:501:10ff:1000::1:aaa.txt
doesn't indicate a file name clearly,  and

scp [3ffe:501:10ff:1000::1]:aaa.txt .
will be expanded as regular expression  by shell.

So we can't use IPv6 addresses with scp6.

Kazu says that he can't use [] and goes mad.
What do you think ?

Thanks.

------------
Yuji SEKIYA	[email-masked] / [email-masked]
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From: "I. Souvatzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 11:36:14 +0100

> Kazu says that he can't use [] and goes mad.

Escape the brackets, or quote the name:

scp \[3ffe:501:10ff:1000::1\]:aaa.txt .
scp '[3ffe:501:10ff:1000::1]:aaa.txt' .

	-is

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From: Kazu Yamamoto (山本和彦) <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 19:46:53 +0900

From: "I. Souvatzis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: (IPng 7344) Re:  The expression of IPv6 addresses.
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 11:36:14 +0100

> Escape the brackets, or quote the name:

Of couse, we know.

> scp '[3ffe:501:10ff:1000::1]:aaa.txt' .

Our point is why not choose shell-safe characters.

It's easy to say escaping and/or quoting works. But it is not easy to
use.

--Kazu

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From: "I. Souvatzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 12:01:17 +0100

> It's easy to say escaping and/or quoting works. But it is not easy to

Only if you aren't used to it.

I guess the problem is that it can't really be avoided. If you change it,
somebody will speak up who uses a shell with the new characters.

[] have the advantage that they are already in wide use for specifying 
numeric IPv4 addresses (in E-mail addresses).

	-is

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From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 22:12:59 +1100

Date:        Wed, 24 Mar 1999 19:46:53 +0900
    From:        Kazu Yamamoto <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | It's easy to say escaping and/or quoting works. But it is not easy to
  | use.

It doesn't have to be easy to use.   IPv6 addresses by their very nature
(128 bits of gibberish) are not going to be easy to use. however they're
written.   Except in the very rare cases where the DNS isn't working,
names should be used instead of addresses.   All that is required after
that is that it be possible to use an IPv6 address literally, for the odd
times when name translation isn't working - it doesn't have to be easy.

kre

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From: "Matt Crawford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 08:38:01 -0600

> ...,  and

There are already a lot of standard unix commands that want some
shell-special characters in their arguments and hence require
quoting.  Requiring shell quoting for address literals wouldn't
bother me in the least.
				Matt
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From: Shane Kerr <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 12:06:04 -0500 (EST)

On 24 Mar 1999, Magnus Ahltorp wrote:

> Because shells are not uniform. For example, in VMS, the [foo] would
> indicate a path. '/' would indicate a parameter.
> 
> You have a more serious problem when the names of the files that
> should be copied include ':' (legal on Unix type systems).

This is not really an IPv6-related problem, however.  The current rcp/scp
syntax uses the colon character.  The IPv6-related problem is how to
disambiguate the colons present in the address from the colon seperator
character in rcp/scp and URL formats.  The proposed notation achieves this
goal.

I remember looking through some old mail archives a couple of months ago
from circa 1994 discussing this problem, and the general concensus seemed
to be that almost any change in syntax was just too darn hard for URL
parsers.  Is this no longer the case?  (I hope.)

--
Shane Kerr <[email-masked]>
Software Engineer
American Registry for Internet Numbers

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From: Magnus Ahltorp <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Mar 1999 17:49:07 +0100

/Magnus