I'm trying to understand the lexical structure allowed for descriptors (RFC 2578) in the following: descriptor OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { ... }
Is RFC 2578 the correct reference for SMIv2 syntax?
RFC 2578 allows mixed case descriptors in this place in the syntax, provided they start with a lower case letter. As I would expect from my limited use of your fine product, libsmi supports this correctly :-)
However, we're seeing various vendor MIBs that have the initial letter in upper case. Did SMIv1 allow this or are the vendors just wrong? I can't find an RFC that seems to document the SMIv1 syntax with the clarity of RFC 2578 for SMIv2.
As you'll appreciate, users object to having to modify the vendor MIBs to get them to compile. As a developer, I prefer the strict approach (if the source is wrong, fix it, don't accept it). However, I'm under some pressure from our customer support team to deliver what they term "a usability fix." We're not aiming at a technically sophisticated market.
Can anyone offer advice as to the consequences if I were to modify the SMI lexer/parser to allow these descriptors to start with an uppercase letter? Would it break valid MIBs?
Cheers, Pat
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