ABNF for field-value

• From: Adrian Custer <avc.httpbis@gmail.com>
• Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:02:31 -0400
• To: HTTPbis <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <50437507.3080509@gmail.com>

Hey all,

Section 3.2.2 of version 20 of the current draft, in the second 
paragraph, states:
   "The field value does not include any leading or
    trailing white space: ..."
so should the ABNF not be something like

field-value = (VCHAR / obs-text) [ *(field-content / obs-fold)
                                    (VCHAR / obs-text) ]

(ignoring the line break which may alter the semantic meaning)?

The current ABNF allows both leading and trailing whitespace, indeed 
would allow the whole value to be a space.

Since this definition would force the field-value to be non-empty, this 
approach would require allowing the field-value to be optional in the 
<header-field> element rather than requiring a, possibly empty, 
field-value. That approach makes more logical sense to me but might have 
repercussions of which I am unaware.

cheers,
   Adrian

Received on Sunday, 2 September 2012 15:02:59 UTC