draft-ietf-httpbis-header-structure: handling multiple field values

Hi there,

while working on an implementation I encountered the following question.

Consider something defined as "sh-list". If a value is received spread
over multiple field instances, recipients *can* recombine the value
before processing. So for

   Foo: "1
   Foo: 2"

...the parser would see the string "1,2" (or maybe "1, 2").

What's not totally clear to me is whether recipients are *allowed* to
process the field values separately, in which case parsing would fail.

If this is allowed, I would expect tests in
<https://github.com/httpwg/structured-header-tests> where "can_fail" is
set to true, but I couldn't find any.

FWIW; one reason for processing them separately would be to catch syntax
errors; another one performance, as it would avoid concatenating things
that can be parsed separately.

Best regards, Julian

Received on Tuesday, 12 May 2020 16:59:36 UTC