RFC 6020, "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", October 2010

Errata ID: 4911
Status: Verified
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Ladislav Lhotka
Date Reported: 2017-01-18
Verifier Name: Benoit Claise
Date Verified: 2017-01-23

Section 6.1.3 says:

Within a double-quoted string (enclosed within " "), a backslash
character introduces a special character, which depends on the
character that immediately follows the backslash:

 \n      new line
 \t      a tab character
 \"      a double quote
 \\      a single backslash

It should say:

Within a double-quoted string (enclosed within " "), a backslash
character introduces a special character, which depends on the
character that immediately follows the backslash:

 \n      new line
 \t      a tab character
 \"      a double quote
 \\      a single backslash


The interpretation of any character other than the ones listed above
following a backslash is undefined. Authors are advised to avoid using
such backslash sequences in double-quoted strings in their YANG
modules.

Notes:

The text doesn't state whether other characters may follow the backslash, and if yes, what it means. Existing implementations have used three approaches:

1. report an error if another character follows the backslash
2. keep only the character following the backslash, i.e., for example, "\x" is the same as "x".
3. keep both the backslash and the character following it.

This ambiguity is undesirable and YANG 1.1 [RFC 7950] explicitly adopted option #1. However, many modules are still being written using YANG version 1.0, so it is important to clarify this issue in RFC 6020 as well.

Report New Errata