Bug#656637: debian-policy: §5.1 is slightly ambiguous on space

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Fri, 2012-01-20 at 17:45:32 +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
> Package: debian-policy
> Severity: minor

> I would like to request a clarification on whether spaces are allowed
> in fields.  My first thought was that it is not allowed.  However
> units-filter/3.5-2 has a a space in the fields of its d/control file,
> so presumably dpkg accepts it (at least to some extend).

> Looking at the Policy §5.1, I found:
> 
> """
> [...] each field consists of the field name, followed by a colon
> and then the data/value associated with that field. The field name is
> composed of printable ASCII characters (i.e., characters that have
> values between 33 and 126, inclusive) except colon and must not with a
> begin with #.
> """

dpkg accepts spacess only after the actual field name and before the
colon, but not in the actual field name itself. They are trimmed for
all practical purposes:

  <http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=dpkg/dpkg.git;a=blob;f=lib/dpkg/parse.c;hb=HEAD#l403>

In addition dpkg is quite more lenient on the range of accepted
characters, something I might consider changing (but only slightly).

thanks,
guillem