Re: #1047 Path-identity: A proposal (perhaps)

[John Stanley <stanley@xxxxxxxx>]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>There are only 3 ways I see to get rid of the : character:

>- Stop putting domain-literals in Path: at all (seems unacceptable)
>- Encode IPv6 addresses differently (seems unacceptable)
>- Treat IPv6 and IPv4 differently (seems unacceptable)

>If you've eliminated the impossible, what you're left with.....

How did we leap from "seems unacceptable" to "impossible"?

Let's see. We're stuck with legacy apps that are unlikely to change their 
method of parsing a Path header overnight, all based on a pesky colon. But
the "standard" means of representing an IPv6 address uses colons. What do 
we do?

Hmmm. How about simply eliminating the colons (and the effects) from the 
IPv6 address literal? Bingo -- a 16 character "path-identity" without
any punctuation. No need for the :: shorthand, people aren't typing it in 
over and over again.