----- Original Message ----- > From: "Joe Abley" <jab...@hopcount.ca>
> > In fact, Joe, I think it's distinguishing your second case from "a label > > string which is intended to reference a rooted FQDN, but the user did not > > specify the trailing dot -- and yet still does not want a search path > > applied"... > > That's the same as my second case. > > "rooted FQDN" is also not well-defined outside this thread. I don't > think just adopting the terminology unilaterally is going to make it > so. It isn't? I knew what he meant immediately, without having to read the rest of the sentence: an ascii represenation of a fully qualified hostname with a period at the end. > >> The terminology "root zone" or "root domain" to explain the trailing > >> dot is misleading and unhelpful, I find. > > > > No, what's *really* unhelpful and misleading is the people who say > > that it is the *dot* which specifies the name of the root, > > The dot doesn't specify the name of the root. That's why it's > confusing. Oh: we're in violent agreement. :-) > > rather than the > > null labelstring which *follows* that dot (which is what it actually > > is, and I'll save everyone's stomach linings by not saying the words > > "alternate root" here. :-) > > There is no null label string following the dot in a fully-qualified > domain name, in this context. You're confusing the presentation of > domain names with wire-format encoding of domain names. Well, alas, I think you have to unpack that last sentence at least one more layer for me to be sure what I'm agreeing or disagreeing with... but since the dot is a separator (I believe by definition), if it exists at the end, it has to be separating *something*. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274
