XML-safe property names

We discovered recently that property names have to be suitable for use as XML tag names, otherwise RA-DAV fails with malformed XML. We said we should restrict property names to something reasonable.

I have just committed (r7528) a check in libsvn_client that each property name being set is in the form of an XML "Name", which is:

  First character: _ : letter
  Other characters: _ : . - letter digit

I have restricted it to ASCII, whereas the XML definition of a "Name" includes all Unicode "letters", "digits" and some other characters.

If people have started using characters which are now disallowed, they may be unhappy now, but I felt it was better to make this change before version 1.0 and have the option of expanding the allowable range later than vice versa.

The restriction is enforced on "propset" (and "propedit", after exiting the editor). The idea of this is to prevent people from creating any more badly named properties. There is currently no restriction on viewing and deleting bad properties because these actions may be useful over RA-LOCAL for a transition period even if they do not work over RA-DAV.

- Julian

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Received on Mon Oct 27 02:36:07 2003