Re: RFC2231 encoding in HTTP: whitespace handling

Julian Reschke wrote:

> Can you point to language or ABNF rules in RFC2231 or MIME
> that actually says that (I'm ready to believe you, I just
> want to understand how you come to that conclusion...).

It's a bit tricky, that's why I sent a copy to Ned.

"*" is no <tspecials> in RFC 2045.  A lexical parser handles
it as ordinary token character.

"*" is also no <specials> in RFC 5232 (2822upd).  A lexical
parser handles it as ordinary <atext> character.

RFC 2231 does not update <tspecials>.  In fact it says:

| Specifically, an asterisk at the end of a parameter name
| acts as an indicator that character set and language
| information may appear at the beginning of the parameter
| value.

"At the end of" is arguably not the same as "following".
Not the same situation as for "=", where RFC 2045 states:

| Note that the definition of "tspecials" is the same as
| the RFC 822 definition of "specials" with the addition
| of the three characters "/", "?", and "=", and the
| removal of ".".

But I'm far from sure that my interpretation is okay...

 Frank