[db-wg] "status:" attribute values in the RIPE database

In message <YL89iirxN8Q9SlXS at hydra.ck.polsl.pl>, 
Piotr Strzyzewski <Piotr.Strzyzewski at polsl.pl> wrote:

>On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 04:48:38PM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette via db-wg wrote:
>> inetnum:    A1.B1.C1.D1 -
>> 		A2.B2.C2.D2
>> 
>> My parser wasn't expecting THAT!
>
>That says a lot about the parser, as this is well described in
>documentation:

Although it may have escaped your attention, as a general matter, reality
frequently diverges from documentation.

In any case, it is easily possible to parse WHOIS records sufficiently well
to do a multitude of useful things without consulting any documentation
of the format. It can be done just by eyeballing what is fundamentally
a rather simple syntax.

Furthermore, as I noted, there are literally hundreds of thousands of
objects in the APNIC data base.  Of these only a single one had an
inetnum: field that was splattered, needlessly, and for no apparently
good reason, across multiple lines.

(I hope to soon find out whether such pointless oddities are present
also in the RIPE data base.)


Regards,
rfg