[bug #62586] Warning given every time wget runs: “.netrc:..: unknown token” when a password contains quotes

[Tim Ruehsen]

Follow-up Comment #1, bug #62586 (project wget):

As you mention, there is no standard/spec. And this puts this issue into an
unsolvable state. Too many clients have their own, slightly diverting
implementation. Whatever any client will change, it likely breaks backwards
compatibility.

I looked into netkit and GNU inetutils' ftp command. In both cases, the .netrc
parser allows surrounding double quotes and supports primitive escaping using
\ (the following char is taken as-is). No hint for a support of bash-style
quoting.

Wget (and nowadays also curl) does basically the same thing (but not 100%
identical).

Interestingly, both ftp clients I looked at use a character/stream based
parser. This implies that quoted password can span multiple lines - the only
way to include e.g. a linefeed into the password (\ escaping doesn't allow
this).

Fetchmail (and also wget) uses a line-oriented parser that doesn't allow
linefeed in a password at all. And it uses what you call 'bash-style' quoting
- something that is absolutely unneeded when it comes to embedding quotes in
passwords.

My conclusion is that it is too late to set up a spec, and that fetchmail is
at least incompatible with other netrc parsers (to say it nicely).




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