Alexey Toptygin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Phil Oester wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 12:58:48AM +0000, Alexey Toptygin wrote:
>>>> But if you use a FQDN such as www.domain.com/24, then shouldn't that
>>>> then imply <ip of www.domain.com>/24?  That's why I didn't make the
>>>> exception for letters vs. digits, as it could be used either way.
>>>
>>> I don't understand what you mean. I think if it starts with a digit, it
>>> must be an IP (or part of an IP with 0's dropped), else it is a network
>>> name or a domain name (since neither of those can start with 
>>> digits). If
>>> it's an IP by the above logic, then pad it with '.0's as necessary (or
>>> translate directly into a number without padding first). If it's not an
>>> IP, first call getnetbyname on it and if that returns NULL call
>>> gethostbyname. I think this algorithm works in all cases, unless I'm
>>> missing something.
>>
>> What I meant was some people might want to include the /24 a host sits
>> on, and use something like "mydomain.com/24".  When the name gets
>> translated to 1.2.3.4, the cidr would make it 1.2.3.0/24.
>>
>> Also, as Martijn points out, just starting with digit doesn't imply
>> an IP, as hosts can start with digits also.
>
> I think my mail server ate my replies to this, so here it is a third 
> time. Sorry if this is a duplicate; if it is, please let me know and 
> I'll shut up (my incoming mail seems to be working fine). DNS domain 
> names are not allowed to start with digits; I quote RFC 1034:
>
>> <domain> ::= <subdomain> | " "
>> <subdomain> ::= <label> | <subdomain> "." <label>
>> <label> ::= <letter> [ [ <ldh-str> ] <let-dig> ]
>> <ldh-str> ::= <let-dig-hyp> | <let-dig-hyp> <ldh-str>
>> <let-dig-hyp> ::= <let-dig> | "-"
>> <let-dig> ::= <letter> | <digit>
>> <letter> ::= any one of the 52 alphabetic characters A through Z in
>> upper case and a through z in lower case
>> <digit> ::= any one of the ten digits 0 through 9
>
the above is obsolete by rfc 1123, section 2.1, Host Names and Numbers. 
only a complete
parse of the name will show that you have the ipv4 address instead 
(#.#.#.#):

"..., then a full syntactic check must be made, because a segment of a 
host domain
name is now allowed to begin with a digit and could legally be entirely 
numeric
(see Section 6.1.2.4). However, a valid host name can never have the 
dotted-decimal
form #.#.#.#, since at least the highest-level component label will be 
alphabetic."
> Thus, if the first character is a digit, the string cannot be a domain 
> name.
> I guess it could still be a network name in /etc/networks, but that 
> would be a bit pathological. If you still don't like this approach, 
> then how about:
>
> 1) parse and remove any trailing /x
> 2) try to parse string you get from step 1 as a (partial) IP address. If
>    it parses OK, it's an IP, otherwise
> 3) look the string you get from step 1 (with no added .0s from step 2, if
>    any) up via getnetbyname. If that returns non-NULL, use this result,
>    otherwise
> 4) look the string you get from step 1 (with no added .0s from step 2, if
>    any) up via gethostbyname. If that returns non-NULL, use that, 
> otherwise
> 5) fail.
>             Alexey