Re: whois syntax

[Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch () muada com>]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Joe Abley wrote:

> > There is no standard specified in the RFC for output, just for query
> > language.

> Is RFC954 a standard in any real sense? Seems to me that the RFC2026
> designation for that document would be "Historic", although RFC954 is
> old enough that it is not labelled with a maturity level.

Well, the process is standardizes is so simple and flexible there
obviously hasn't been any need to change the past 16 years:

PROTOCOL

   To access the NICNAME/WHOIS server:

      Connect to the SRI-NIC service host at TCP service port 43
      (decimal).

      Send a single "command line", ending with <CRLF> (ASCII CR and
      LF).

      Receive information in response to the command line.  The server
      closes its connection as soon as the output is finished.

> The only consistent similarities I can find between all the deployed
> production *IR/IRR/registry/registrar whois servers is (a) that they
> all let you look stuff up, and (b) they all listen on 43/tcp.

Isn't trying to standardize the output of whois servers is like trying to
standardize the output of HTTP servers? Since this output is for human
consumtion (well, after HTML parsing in the case of HTTP) standardizing
has very few benefits.