Re: reframing the Empty IA5 string discussion

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 12:20 AM 11/11/2004, Steven Legg wrote:
>Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
>>I see that there are few reasonable options here:
>>1) IA5 strings precludes zero-length values
>>2) IA5 strings allows zero-length values
>>   2A) a zero-length values only matches a zero-length value
>>   2B) a zero-length value matches " " (and all values
>>       equivalent to " ").
>>I prefer 1 over 2A over 2B (see prior posts for why).
>
>There are two separate questions here. Whether or not the IA5 String syntax
>is restricted to preclude zero-length values (I don't care either way) there
>is still the potential for zero-length IA5String values to be compared by
>caseIgnoreIA5Match through component matching.

Above, when I said "precludes" or "allows", I should have said
"by matching rule constraints".  That is, IA5String is as defined
in X.680.  The preclude/allows can be viewed an artifact of the
particular equality rule used, not as an artifact of this
particular syntax.  So, while LDAP doesn't re-define X.680's
IA5String, it does define caseIgnoreIA5Match.

Kurt