Re: ldap_explode_dn corrupts UTF-8 encoding (ITS#1890)

[ps@psncc.at]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Pierangelo Masarati wrote:

> > It is mostly a matter of breaking things that used to work.
>
> I have no problems in letting ldap_explode_dn/rdn return
> a "pretty" (UTF-8) form of the dn: it's not a big deal; however
> I'd like to see some consensus on that, which is difficult
> to gather on obsoleted function calls: everybody would like
> to keep them as they were, regardless of incompatibilities
> or problems that might arise if fancy formats are used.
>

One more thing I would like to add: The compatibility problem will
manifest itself even (and especially) in dynamically linked executables...
so if somebody upgrades OpenLDAP from 2.0 to 2.1 suddenly many
applications will show wrong DNs. I agree that due to the RFCs one must
already expect \<hex> encoded characters, but I guess that most
application developers just use the OpenLDAP man pages as a reference.
Thus I think that most current software will not expect such encodings.

Assume that a popular Linux distribution upgrades OpenLDAP to 2.1.x:
Suddenly everything looks different... not a nice thought, and it will
be blamed on OpenLDAP... And it is a matter of taste if one thinks that
this is true or that all applications are poorly written...

ps