Subject: [Tools-discuss] ABNF tools

From: wayne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:39:25 -0500

Hi.

I've just recently stumbled across two tools that I think should be
placed on the IETF tools webpage.

They are:

abnf - converter from ABNF to Regexp
http://cvs.m17n.org/~akr/abnf/

APG - an ABNF Parser Generator
http://www.coasttocoastresearch.com/

Today, I used the abnf to regex converter to take the ABNF for SPF
records out of my I-D and then ran it against the SPF test suite that
I've been working on.  I found a couple of bugs in the ABNF and
several bugs in the test suite.  This is despite the fact that I had
put a lot of work into both of the ABNF and the test suite and thought
they were right.  

I think these tools are very important because they change the ABNF
from being basicly pseudo-code into something that is functional.  The
ABNF checkers do a good job of making sure the ABNF syntax is correct,
but they don't really help you ensure that the ABNF does what you
really want it to do.

By making the ABNF function and actually testing the ABNF found in
RFCs, I think we significantly improve the accuracy of the ABNF.  For
example, the abnf->re convert has to give corrected ABNF for IPv6
addresses because the ABNF found in RFC2373 is wrong.  (SPF uses IPv6
addresses, so this is important to me.)

-wayne

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:03:32 +0200

Hi Wayne,

    Nice tools - I've added them to the tools.ietf.org pages under
Validation tools.

Thanks!

	Henrik