interesting person entry...

Hi Joachim,

> Joachim Schmitz writes :
> 
>  by accident I discovered a person entry which in its form is definitely
>  not wanted:
> 
> *pn: Stefan Seiz
> *ad: Herdweg 73
> *ad:                               \
>   ...                               > 128 empty address lines!!!
> *ad:                               /
> *ad: 70174 Stuttgart
> *ad: Germany
> *ph: +49 711 18748-0
> *fx: +49 711 18748-32
> *em: index at schwaben.com
> *nh: SSE2-RIPE
> *ny: noc at ecrc.de
> *ch: wer at ecrc.de 951115
> *so: RIPE
> 
>  I am in no position to decide whether the entry was done including these
>  empty lines or whether this is an error of the database software.

I am in such a position and found indeed a bug (It was the power of two
that made me feel that there was a bigger problem then at first sight).

I could quickly trace the problem *and* have fixed the code.

The software was doubling the number of empty attributes during the
reindexing process :-(. The fix will also remove the extra empty lines
during the reindexing process.

Note for the real-time mirror people: The fix might cause some faulty
updates (the software will warn you about this). Please get the new
software when Ambrose makes it available.

>  I think a check should be implemented during acceptance of new database
>  objects (or updates) which 
>  - removes empty input lines (or fields which do contain nothing but
>    white space)

The software intended to do the following:

- Remove leading and trailing empty lines in every attribute.
  (attribute=all lines with the same attribute together)

- Accept empty lines inside the attribute
  (This allows for punctuation in Free Text attributes)

  I changed this one to:
  
  Accept at most one consecutive empty line in an attribute. 

  Note: some individual attributes might have syntax checking code that
        disallows any empty lines inside the attribute.

>  - afterwards checks whether all mandatory fields for the object are filled
>    in should be done
>  (actually I expect such a test to be performed anyway...)

This is done & was done.

The database working group might want to decide to completely disallow
empty attribute lines inside a (non empty) attribute.

I personally feel that this should be done through the config file: give
every attribute a property of allowed empty lines or not. For example
'remarks:' lines can be read easier when they may contain empty lines
while empty rev-srv: lines are useless.

David K.