RFC 8610, "Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL): A Notational Convention to Express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and JSON Data Structures", June 2019

Note: This RFC has been updated by RFC 9682

Errata ID: 6543
Status: Held for Document Update
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Sean Bartell
Date Reported: 2021-04-13
Held for Document Update by: Francesca Palombini
Date Held: 2021-04-23

Section B says:

     bytes = [bsqual] %x27 *BCHAR %x27
     BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF

It should say:

     bytes = %x27 *BCHAR %x27
           / bsqual %x27 *QCHAR %x27
     BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF
     QCHAR = DIGIT / ALPHA / "+" / "/" / "-" / "_" / "=" / WS

Notes:

As discussed during the CBOR interim 2021-04-21 and in the mailing list: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/cbor/ekFn8a4GbUQAk4nyhc-Il-ZRLZc/
--

The ABNF used in [RFC8610] for the content of byte string literals lumps together byte strings notated as text with byte strings notated in base16 (hex) or base64 (but see also updated BCHAR production above):

bytes = [bsqual] %x27 *BCHAR %x27
BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF

Errata report 6543 proposes to handle the two cases in separate productions (where, with an updated SESC, BCHAR obviously needs to be updated as above):

bytes = %x27 *BCHAR %x27
/ bsqual %x27 *QCHAR %x27
BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF
QCHAR = DIGIT / ALPHA / "+" / "/" / "-" / "_" / "=" / WS

This potentially causes a subtle change, which is hidden in the WS production:

WS = SP / NL
SP = %x20
NL = COMMENT / CRLF
COMMENT = ";" *PCHAR CRLF
PCHAR = %x20-7E / %x80-10FFFD
CRLF = %x0A / %x0D.0A

This allows any non-C0 character in a comment, so this fragment becomes possible:

foo = h'
43424F52 ; 'CBOR'
0A ; LF, but don't use CR!
'

The current text is not unambiguously saying whether the three apostrophes need to be escaped with a \ or not, as in:

foo = h'
43424F52 ; \'CBOR\'
0A ; LF, but don\'t use CR!
'
... which would be supported by the existing ABNF in [RFC8610].

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