[jcifs] Annoying SMB URL question.

[Glass, Eric]

Just beating a dead horse -- I would think the escaped-backslash syntax
(i.e., DOMAIN%5Cuser) would be more consistent, given that

a) The DOMAIN\user syntax is most widely used by the MS tools

b) You can already do http://DOMAIN%5Cuser:pass@webhost for NTLM-protected
content on IIS webservers (not entirely relevant, I know, but maybe
worthwhile for consistency's sake)

c) Selecting ";" simply because it doesn't have to be escaped doesn't really
buy you anything; to be correct, your applications will still have to be
able to unescape whatever separator is chosen.  i.e.:

smb://DOMAIN%3Buser:pass@server

is just as valid as:

smb://DOMAIN;user:pass@server

Basically, you still have to be able to do a hex to char conversion to cover
the possibility that the user simply chose to escape the separator.

Just my two cents.  On another note (out of curiosity), in my environment we
have two domains (for example, "DOM1" and "DOM2") which I'm assuming are set
up with some sort of trust relationship; that is, I can log into box
"server" which is a member of DOM2 using my account "eric" in DOM1.  How
would that be represented in a URL, where my user credentials are for an
account in one domain ("DOM1\eric"), but I am accessing a resource on a
server which is a member of another domain ("DOM2\server")?

Eric


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Conrad Minshall [mailto:conrad at apple.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 3:44 PM
> To: Christopher R. Hertel; Matthew Tippett
> Cc: jcifs at samba.org
> Subject: Re: [jcifs] Annoying SMB URL question.
> 
> 
> At 11:54 AM -0600 12/6/02, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:
> 
> >>  Which begs the question, if the domain is used for 
> authentication, why
> >>  not leave the user field in the userinfo section of the URL as
> >>
> >>    DOMAIN%5Cuser
> >>
> >>  Since the domain is an integral part of the credentials.
> >
> >The application (the client parsing the URL string and 
> converting it into
> >SMB calls) needs to parse the NTDomain from the username.  
> You are right
> >that we could have chosen to separate the two using an 
> escaped backslash
> >or, perhaps an escaped percent sign.  Instead, we found that the
> >semi-colon did not need to be escaped in the username field 
> and could be
> >used as a separator.
> >
> >It just seemed easier and more readable to use the semicolon.
> 
> Yes.  Having all separators unescaped means I can look at a URL and 
> ignore escape sequences rather than doing a hex to char on each to 
> see if it is important. 
> 
 
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