CBOR C. Bormann Internet-Draft Universität Bremen TZI Updates: 8610 (if approved) 15 December 2023 Intended status: Standards Track Expires: 17 June 2024 Updates to the CDDL grammar of RFC 8610 draft-ietf-cbor-update-8610-grammar-02 Abstract The Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL), as defined in RFC 8610 and RFC 9165, provides an easy and unambiguous way to express structures for protocol messages and data formats that are represented in CBOR or JSON. The present document updates RFC 8610 by addressing errata and making other small fixes for the ABNF grammar defined for CDDL there. About This Document This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC. The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://cbor- wg.github.io/update-8610-grammar/. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf- cbor-update-8610-grammar/. Discussion of this document takes place on the CBOR Working Group mailing list (mailto:cbor@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/cbor/. Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cbor/. Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/cbor-wg/update-8610-grammar. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 1] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 17 June 2024. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2023 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Clarifications and Changes based on Errata Reports . . . . . 3 2.1. Err6527 (text string literals) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.2. Err6543 (byte string literals) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Change proposed by Errata Report 6543 . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 No change needed after addressing Err6527 (text string literals) (Section 2.1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. Small Enabling Grammar Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.1. Empty data models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.2. Non-literal Tag Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Appendix A. Updated Collected ABNF for CDDL . . . . . . . . . . 10 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 2] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 1. Introduction The Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL), as defined in [RFC8610] and [RFC9165], provides an easy and unambiguous way to express structures for protocol messages and data formats that are represented in CBOR or JSON. The present document updates [RFC8610] by addressing errata and making other small fixes for the ABNF grammar defined for CDDL there. 1.1. Conventions and Definitions The Terminology from [RFC8610] applies. The grammar in [RFC8610] is based on ABNF, which is defined in [STD68] and [RFC7405]. 2. Clarifications and Changes based on Errata Reports _Compatibility_: errata fix A number of errata reports have been made around some details of text string and byte string literal syntax: [Err6527] and [Err6543]. These are being addressed in this section, updating details of the ABNF for these literal syntaxes. Also, [Err6526] needs to be applied (backslashes have been lost during RFC processing in some text explaining backslash escaping). 2.1. Err6527 (text string literals) The ABNF used in [RFC8610] for the content of text string literals is rather permissive: ; RFC 8610 ABNF: text = %x22 *SCHAR %x22 SCHAR = %x20-21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / %x80-10FFFD / SESC SESC = "\" (%x20-7E / %x80-10FFFD) Figure 1: Old ABNF for strings with permissive ABNF for SESC, but not allowing hex escapes This allows almost any non-C0 character to be escaped by a backslash, but critically misses out on the \uXXXX and \uHHHH\uLLLL forms that JSON allows to specify characters in hex (which should be applying here according to Bullet 6 of Section 3.1 of [RFC8610]). (Note that we import from JSON the unwieldy \uHHHH\uLLLL syntax, which represents Unicode code points beyond U+FFFF by making them look like UTF-16 surrogate pairs; CDDL text strings are not using UTF-16 or surrogates.) Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 3] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 Both can be solved by updating the SESC production to: ; new rules collectively defining SESC: SESC = "\" ( %x22 / "/" / "\" / ; \" \/ \\ %x62 / %x66 / %x6E / %x72 / %x74 / ; \b \f \n \r \t (%x75 hexchar) ) ; \uXXXX hexchar = non-surrogate / (high-surrogate "\" %x75 low-surrogate) non-surrogate = ((DIGIT / "A"/"B"/"C" / "E"/"F") 3HEXDIG) / ("D" %x30-37 2HEXDIG ) high-surrogate = "D" ("8"/"9"/"A"/"B") 2HEXDIG low-surrogate = "D" ("C"/"D"/"E"/"F") 2HEXDIG Figure 2: Updated string ABNF to allow hex escapes (Notes: In ABNF, strings such as "A", "B" etc. are case-insensitive, as is intended here. We could have written %x62 as %s"b", but didn't, in order to maximize ABNF tool compatibility.) Now that SESC is more restrictively formulated, this also requires an update to the BCHAR production used in the ABNF syntax for byte string literals: ; RFC 8610 ABNF: bytes = [bsqual] %x27 *BCHAR %x27 BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF bsqual = "h" / "b64" Figure 3: Old ABNF for BCHAR With the SESC updated as above, \' is no longer allowed in BCHAR; this now needs to be explicitly included. Updating BCHAR also provides an opportunity to address [Err6278], which points to an inconsistency in treating U+007F (DEL) between SCHAR and BCHAR. As U+007F is not printable, including it in a byte string literal is as confusing as for a text string literal, and it should therefore be excluded from BCHAR as it is from SCHAR. The same reasoning also applies to the C1 control characters, so we actually exclude the entire range from U+007F to U+009F. The same reasoning then also applies to text in comments (PCHAR). For completeness, all these should also explicitly exclude the code points that have been set aside for UTF-16's surrogates. ; new rules for BCHAR and SCHAR: SCHAR = %x20-21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / NONASCII / SESC BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-7E / NONASCII / SESC / "\'" / CRLF PCHAR = %x20-7E / NONASCII NONASCII = %xA0-D7FF / %xE000-10FFFD Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 4] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 Figure 4: Updated ABNF for BCHAR, SCHAR, and PCHAR (Note that, apart from addressing the inconsistencies, there is no attempt to further exclude non-printable characters from the ABNF; doing this properly would draw in complexity from the ongoing evolution of the Unicode standard that is not needed here.) 2.2. Err6543 (byte string literals) The ABNF used in [RFC8610] for the content of byte string literals lumps together byte strings notated as text with byte strings notated in base16 (hex) or base64 (but see also updated BCHAR production above): ; RFC 8610 ABNF: bytes = [bsqual] %x27 *BCHAR %x27 BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF Figure 5: Old ABNF for BCHAR Change proposed by Errata Report 6543 Errata report 6543 proposes to handle the two cases in separate productions (where, with an updated SESC, BCHAR obviously needs to be updated as above): ; Err6543 proposal: bytes = %x27 *BCHAR %x27 / bsqual %x27 *QCHAR %x27 BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-10FFFD / SESC / CRLF QCHAR = DIGIT / ALPHA / "+" / "/" / "-" / "_" / "=" / WS Figure 6: Errata Report 8653 Proposal to Split the Byte String Rules This potentially causes a subtle change, which is hidden in the WS production: ; RFC 8610 ABNF: WS = SP / NL SP = %x20 NL = COMMENT / CRLF COMMENT = ";" *PCHAR CRLF PCHAR = %x20-7E / %x80-10FFFD CRLF = %x0A / %x0D.0A Figure 7: ABNF definition of WS from RFC 8610 Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 5] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 This allows any non-C0 character in a comment, so this fragment becomes possible: foo = h' 43424F52 ; 'CBOR' 0A ; LF, but don't use CR! ' The current text is not unambiguously saying whether the three apostrophes need to be escaped with a \ or not, as in: foo = h' 43424F52 ; \'CBOR\' 0A ; LF, but don\'t use CR! ' ... which would be supported by the existing ABNF in [RFC8610]. No change needed after addressing Err6527 (text string literals) (Section 2.1) // note that the HTML rendering of the heading is butchered by // xml2rfc, as noted in https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/ // issues/683; we except this to have been fixed before this document // is published This document takes the simpler approach of leaving the processing of the content of the byte string literal to a semantic step after processing the syntax of the bytes/BCHAR rules as updated by Figure 2 and Figure 4. The rules in Figure 7 are therefore applied to the result of this processing where bsqual is given as h or b64. Note that this approach also works well with the use of byte strings in Section 3 of [RFC9165]. It does require some care when copy- pasting into CDDL models from ABNF that contains single quotes (which may also hide as apostrophes in comments); these need to be escaped or possibly replaced by %x27. Finally, our approach would lend support to extending bsqual in CDDL similar to the way this is done for CBOR diagnostic notation in [I-D.ietf-cbor-edn-literals]. Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 6] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 3. Small Enabling Grammar Changes The two subsections in this section specify two small changes to the grammar that are intended to enable certain kinds of specifications. 3.1. Empty data models _Compatibility_: backward (not forward) [RFC8610] requires a CDDL file to have at least one rule. ; RFC 8610 ABNF: cddl = S 1*(rule S) Figure 8: Old ABNF for top-level rule cddl This makes sense when the file has to stand alone, as a CDDL data model needs to have at least one rule to provide an entry point (start rule). With CDDL modules [I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl-modules], CDDL files can also include directives, and these might be the source of all the rules that ultimately make up the module created by the file. Any other rule content in the file has to be available for directive processing, making the requirement for at least one rule cumbersome. Therefore, we extend the grammar as in Figure 9 and make the existence of at least one rule a semantic constraint, to be fulfilled after processing of all directives. ; new top-level rule: cddl = S *(rule S) Figure 9: Updated ABNF for top-level rule cddl 3.2. Non-literal Tag Numbers _Compatibility_: backward (not forward) The existing ABNF syntax for expressing tags in CDDL is: ; extracted from RFC 8610 ABNF: type2 =/ "#" "6" ["." uint] "(" S type S ")" Figure 10: Old ABNF for tag syntax Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 7] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 This means tag numbers can only be given as literal numbers (uints). Some specifications operate on ranges of tag numbers, e.g., [RFC9277] has a range of tag numbers 1668546817 (0x63740101) to 1668612095 (0x6374FFFF) to tag specific content formats. This can currently not be expressed in CDDL. This update extends this to: ; new rules collectively defining the tagged case: type2 =/ "#" "6" ["." tag-number] "(" S type S ")" tag-number = uint / ("<" type ">") Figure 11: Updated ABNF for tag syntax So the above range can be expressed in a CDDL fragment such as: ct-tag = #6.(content) ct-tag-number = 1668546817..1668612095 ; or use 0x63740101..0x6374FFFF Notes: 1. This syntax reuses the angle bracket syntax for generics; this reuse is innocuous as a generic parameter/argument only ever occurs after a rule name (id), while it occurs after . here. (Whether there is potential for human confusion can be debated; the above example deliberately uses generics as well.) 2. The updated ABNF grammar makes it a bit more explicit that the number given after the optional dot is special, not giving the CBOR "additional information" as it is with other uses of # in CDDL. (Adding this observation to Section 2.2.3 of [RFC8610] is the subject of [Err6575]; it is correctly noted in Section 3.6 of [RFC8610].) In hindsight, maybe a different character than the dot should have been chosen for this special case, however changing the grammar now would have been too disruptive. 4. Security Considerations The grammar fixes and updates in this document are not believed to create additional security considerations. The security considerations in Section 5 of [RFC8610] do apply, and specifically the potential for confusion is increased in an environment that uses a combination of CDDL tools some of which have been updated and some of which have not been, in particular based on Section 2. Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 8] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 5. IANA Considerations This document has no IANA actions. 6. References 6.1. Normative References [RFC8610] Birkholz, H., Vigano, C., and C. Bormann, "Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL): A Notational Convention to Express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and JSON Data Structures", RFC 8610, DOI 10.17487/RFC8610, June 2019, . [STD68] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008. 6.2. Informative References [Err6278] "Errata Report 6278", RFC 8610, . [Err6526] "Errata Report 6526", RFC 8610, . [Err6527] "Errata Report 6527", RFC 8610, . [Err6543] "Errata Report 6543", RFC 8610, . [Err6575] "Errata Report 6575", RFC 8610, . [I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl-modules] Bormann, C., "CDDL Module Structure", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-cbor-cddl-modules-00, 17 June 2023, . [I-D.ietf-cbor-edn-literals] Bormann, C., "CBOR Extended Diagnostic Notation (EDN): Application-Oriented Literals, ABNF, and Media Type", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-cbor-edn-literals- 06, 20 November 2023, . Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 9] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 [RFC7405] Kyzivat, P., "Case-Sensitive String Support in ABNF", RFC 7405, DOI 10.17487/RFC7405, December 2014, . [RFC9165] Bormann, C., "Additional Control Operators for the Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL)", RFC 9165, DOI 10.17487/RFC9165, December 2021, . [RFC9277] Richardson, M. and C. Bormann, "On Stable Storage for Items in Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)", RFC 9277, DOI 10.17487/RFC9277, August 2022, . Appendix A. Updated Collected ABNF for CDDL This appendix provides the full ABNF from [RFC8610] with the updates applied in the present document. cddl = S *(rule S) rule = typename [genericparm] S assignt S type / groupname [genericparm] S assigng S grpent typename = id groupname = id assignt = "=" / "/=" assigng = "=" / "//=" genericparm = "<" S id S *("," S id S ) ">" genericarg = "<" S type1 S *("," S type1 S ) ">" type = type1 *(S "/" S type1) type1 = type2 [S (rangeop / ctlop) S type2] ; space may be needed before the operator if type2 ends in a name type2 = value / typename [genericarg] / "(" S type S ")" / "{" S group S "}" / "[" S group S "]" / "~" S typename [genericarg] / "&" S "(" S group S ")" / "&" S groupname [genericarg] / "#" "6" ["." tag-number] "(" S type S ")" / "#" DIGIT ["." uint] ; major/ai / "#" ; any Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 10] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 tag-number = uint / ("<" type ">") rangeop = "..." / ".." ctlop = "." id group = grpchoice *(S "//" S grpchoice) grpchoice = *(grpent optcom) grpent = [occur S] [memberkey S] type / [occur S] groupname [genericarg] ; preempted by above / [occur S] "(" S group S ")" memberkey = type1 S ["^" S] "=>" / bareword S ":" / value S ":" bareword = id optcom = S ["," S] occur = [uint] "*" [uint] / "+" / "?" uint = DIGIT1 *DIGIT / "0x" 1*HEXDIG / "0b" 1*BINDIG / "0" value = number / text / bytes int = ["-"] uint ; This is a float if it has fraction or exponent; int otherwise number = hexfloat / (int ["." fraction] ["e" exponent ]) hexfloat = ["-"] "0x" 1*HEXDIG ["." 1*HEXDIG] "p" exponent fraction = 1*DIGIT exponent = ["+"/"-"] 1*DIGIT text = %x22 *SCHAR %x22 SCHAR = %x20-21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / NONASCII / SESC SESC = "\" ( %x22 / "/" / "\" / ; \" \/ \\ Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 11] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 %x62 / %x66 / %x6E / %x72 / %x74 / ; \b \f \n \r \t (%x75 hexchar) ) ; \uXXXX hexchar = non-surrogate / (high-surrogate "\" %x75 low-surrogate) non-surrogate = ((DIGIT / "A"/"B"/"C" / "E"/"F") 3HEXDIG) / ("D" %x30-37 2HEXDIG ) high-surrogate = "D" ("8"/"9"/"A"/"B") 2HEXDIG low-surrogate = "D" ("C"/"D"/"E"/"F") 2HEXDIG bytes = [bsqual] %x27 *BCHAR %x27 BCHAR = %x20-26 / %x28-5B / %x5D-7E / NONASCII / SESC / "\'" / CRLF bsqual = "h" / "b64" id = EALPHA *(*("-" / ".") (EALPHA / DIGIT)) ALPHA = %x41-5A / %x61-7A EALPHA = ALPHA / "@" / "_" / "$" DIGIT = %x30-39 DIGIT1 = %x31-39 HEXDIG = DIGIT / "A" / "B" / "C" / "D" / "E" / "F" BINDIG = %x30-31 S = *WS WS = SP / NL SP = %x20 NL = COMMENT / CRLF COMMENT = ";" *PCHAR CRLF PCHAR = %x20-7E / NONASCII NONASCII = %xA0-D7FF / %xE000-10FFFD CRLF = %x0A / %x0D.0A Figure 12: ABNF for CDDL as updated Acknowledgments TODO acknowledge. Many thanks go to the submitters of the errata reports addressed in this document. In one of the ensuing discussions, Doug Ewell proposed to define an ABNF rule NONASCII, of which we have included the essence. Author's Address Carsten Bormann Universität Bremen TZI Postfach 330440 D-28359 Bremen Germany Phone: +49-421-218-63921 Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 12] Internet-Draft CDDL grammar updates December 2023 Email: cabo@tzi.org Bormann Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 13]