Network Working Group                                   K. Zeilenga, Ed.
Request for Comments: 4514                           OpenLDAP Foundation
Obsoletes: 2253                                                June 2006
Category: Standards Track


            Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP):
             String Representation of Distinguished Names

Status of This Memo

  This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
  Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
  improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
  Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
  and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

  The X.500 Directory uses distinguished names (DNs) as primary keys to
  entries in the directory.  This document defines the string
  representation used in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
  (LDAP) to transfer distinguished names.  The string representation is
  designed to give a clean representation of commonly used
  distinguished names, while being able to represent any distinguished
  name.

1.  Background and Intended Usage

  In X.500-based directory systems [X.500], including those accessed
  using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) [RFC4510],
  distinguished names (DNs) are used to unambiguously refer to
  directory entries [X.501][RFC4512].

  The structure of a DN [X.501] is described in terms of ASN.1 [X.680].
  In the X.500 Directory Access Protocol [X.511] (and other ITU-defined
  directory protocols), DNs are encoded using the Basic Encoding Rules
  (BER) [X.690].  In LDAP, DNs are represented in the string form
  described in this document.

  It is important to have a common format to be able to unambiguously
  represent a distinguished name.  The primary goal of this
  specification is ease of encoding and decoding.  A secondary goal is
  to have names that are human readable.  It is not expected that LDAP



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  implementations with a human user interface would display these
  strings directly to the user, but that they would most likely be
  performing translations (such as expressing attribute type names in
  the local national language).

  This document defines the string representation of Distinguished
  Names used in LDAP [RFC4511][RFC4517].  Section 2 details the
  RECOMMENDED algorithm for converting a DN from its ASN.1 structured
  representation to a string.  Section 3 details how to convert a DN
  from a string to an ASN.1 structured representation.

  While other documents may define other algorithms for converting a DN
  from its ASN.1 structured representation to a string, all algorithms
  MUST produce strings that adhere to the requirements of Section 3.

  This document does not define a canonical string representation for
  DNs.  Comparison of DNs for equality is to be performed in accordance
  with the distinguishedNameMatch matching rule [RFC4517].

  This document is a integral part of the LDAP technical specification
  [RFC4510], which obsoletes the previously defined LDAP technical
  specification, RFC 3377, in its entirety.  This document obsoletes
  RFC 2253.  Changes since RFC 2253 are summarized in Appendix B.

  This specification assumes familiarity with X.500 [X.500] and the
  concept of Distinguished Name [X.501][RFC4512].

1.1.  Conventions

  The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
  "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
  document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119].

  Character names in this document use the notation for code points and
  names from the Unicode Standard [Unicode].  For example, the letter
  "a" may be represented as either <U+0061> or <LATIN SMALL LETTER A>.

  Note: a glossary of terms used in Unicode can be found in [Glossary].
  Information on the Unicode character encoding model can be found in
  [CharModel].











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2.  Converting DistinguishedName from ASN.1 to a String

  X.501 [X.501] defines the ASN.1 [X.680] structure of distinguished
  name.  The following is a variant provided for discussion purposes.

     DistinguishedName ::= RDNSequence

     RDNSequence ::= SEQUENCE OF RelativeDistinguishedName

     RelativeDistinguishedName ::= SET SIZE (1..MAX) OF
         AttributeTypeAndValue

     AttributeTypeAndValue ::= SEQUENCE {
         type  AttributeType,
         value AttributeValue }

  This section defines the RECOMMENDED algorithm for converting a
  distinguished name from an ASN.1-structured representation to a UTF-8
  [RFC3629] encoded Unicode [Unicode] character string representation.
  Other documents may describe other algorithms for converting a
  distinguished name to a string, but only strings that conform to the
  grammar defined in Section 3 SHALL be produced by LDAP
  implementations.

2.1.  Converting the RDNSequence

  If the RDNSequence is an empty sequence, the result is the empty or
  zero-length string.

  Otherwise, the output consists of the string encodings of each
  RelativeDistinguishedName in the RDNSequence (according to Section
  2.2), starting with the last element of the sequence and moving
  backwards toward the first.

  The encodings of adjoining RelativeDistinguishedNames are separated
  by a comma (',' U+002C) character.

2.2.  Converting RelativeDistinguishedName

  When converting from an ASN.1 RelativeDistinguishedName to a string,
  the output consists of the string encodings of each
  AttributeTypeAndValue (according to Section 2.3), in any order.

  Where there is a multi-valued RDN, the outputs from adjoining
  AttributeTypeAndValues are separated by a plus sign ('+' U+002B)
  character.





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2.3.  Converting AttributeTypeAndValue

  The AttributeTypeAndValue is encoded as the string representation of
  the AttributeType, followed by an equals sign ('=' U+003D) character,
  followed by the string representation of the AttributeValue.  The
  encoding of the AttributeValue is given in Section 2.4.

  If the AttributeType is defined to have a short name (descriptor)
  [RFC4512] and that short name is known to be registered [REGISTRY]
  [RFC4520] as identifying the AttributeType, that short name, a
  <descr>, is used.  Otherwise the AttributeType is encoded as the
  dotted-decimal encoding, a <numericoid>, of its OBJECT IDENTIFIER.
  The <descr> and <numericoid> are defined in [RFC4512].

  Implementations are not expected to dynamically update their
  knowledge of registered short names.  However, implementations SHOULD
  provide a mechanism to allow their knowledge of registered short
  names to be updated.

2.4.  Converting an AttributeValue from ASN.1 to a String

  If the AttributeType is of the dotted-decimal form, the
  AttributeValue is represented by an number sign ('#' U+0023)
  character followed by the hexadecimal encoding of each of the octets
  of the BER encoding of the X.500 AttributeValue.  This form is also
  used when the syntax of the AttributeValue does not have an LDAP-
  specific ([RFC4517], Section 3.1) string encoding defined for it, or
  the LDAP-specific string encoding is not restricted to UTF-8-encoded
  Unicode characters.  This form may also be used in other cases, such
  as when a reversible string representation is desired (see Section
  5.2).

  Otherwise, if the AttributeValue is of a syntax that has a LDAP-
  specific string encoding, the value is converted first to a UTF-8-
  encoded Unicode string according to its syntax specification (see
  [RFC4517], Section 3.3, for examples).  If that UTF-8-encoded Unicode
  string does not have any of the following characters that need
  escaping, then that string can be used as the string representation
  of the value.

     - a space (' ' U+0020) or number sign ('#' U+0023) occurring at
       the beginning of the string;

     - a space (' ' U+0020) character occurring at the end of the
       string;






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     - one of the characters '"', '+', ',', ';', '<', '>',  or '\'
       (U+0022, U+002B, U+002C, U+003B, U+003C, U+003E, or U+005C,
       respectively);

     - the null (U+0000) character.

  Other characters may be escaped.

  Each octet of the character to be escaped is replaced by a backslash
  and two hex digits, which form a single octet in the code of the
  character.  Alternatively, if and only if the character to be escaped
  is one of

     ' ', '"', '#', '+', ',', ';', '<', '=', '>', or '\'
     (U+0020, U+0022, U+0023, U+002B, U+002C, U+003B,
      U+003C, U+003D, U+003E, U+005C, respectively)

  it can be prefixed by a backslash ('\' U+005C).

  Examples of the escaping mechanism are shown in Section 4.

3.  Parsing a String Back to a Distinguished Name

  The string representation of Distinguished Names is restricted to
  UTF-8 [RFC3629] encoded Unicode [Unicode] characters.  The structure
  of this string representation is specified using the following
  Augmented BNF [RFC4234] grammar:

     distinguishedName = [ relativeDistinguishedName
         *( COMMA relativeDistinguishedName ) ]
     relativeDistinguishedName = attributeTypeAndValue
         *( PLUS attributeTypeAndValue )
     attributeTypeAndValue = attributeType EQUALS attributeValue
     attributeType = descr / numericoid
     attributeValue = string / hexstring

     ; The following characters are to be escaped when they appear
     ; in the value to be encoded: ESC, one of <escaped>, leading
     ; SHARP or SPACE, trailing SPACE, and NULL.
     string =   [ ( leadchar / pair ) [ *( stringchar / pair )
        ( trailchar / pair ) ] ]

     leadchar = LUTF1 / UTFMB
     LUTF1 = %x01-1F / %x21 / %x24-2A / %x2D-3A /
        %x3D / %x3F-5B / %x5D-7F

     trailchar  = TUTF1 / UTFMB
     TUTF1 = %x01-1F / %x21 / %x23-2A / %x2D-3A /



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        %x3D / %x3F-5B / %x5D-7F

     stringchar = SUTF1 / UTFMB
     SUTF1 = %x01-21 / %x23-2A / %x2D-3A /
        %x3D / %x3F-5B / %x5D-7F

     pair = ESC ( ESC / special / hexpair )
     special = escaped / SPACE / SHARP / EQUALS
     escaped = DQUOTE / PLUS / COMMA / SEMI / LANGLE / RANGLE
     hexstring = SHARP 1*hexpair
     hexpair = HEX HEX

  where the productions <descr>, <numericoid>, <COMMA>, <DQUOTE>,
  <EQUALS>, <ESC>, <HEX>, <LANGLE>, <NULL>, <PLUS>, <RANGLE>, <SEMI>,
  <SPACE>, <SHARP>, and <UTFMB> are defined in [RFC4512].

  Each <attributeType>, either a <descr> or a <numericoid>, refers to
  an attribute type of an attribute value assertion (AVA).  The
  <attributeType> is followed by an <EQUALS> and an <attributeValue>.
  The <attributeValue> is either in <string> or <hexstring> form.

  If in <string> form, a LDAP string representation asserted value can
  be obtained by replacing (left to right, non-recursively) each <pair>
  appearing in the <string> as follows:

     replace <ESC><ESC> with <ESC>;
     replace <ESC><special> with <special>;
     replace <ESC><hexpair> with the octet indicated by the <hexpair>.

  If in <hexstring> form, a BER representation can be obtained from
  converting each <hexpair> of the <hexstring> to the octet indicated
  by the <hexpair>.

  There is one or more attribute value assertions, separated by <PLUS>,
  for a relative distinguished name.

  There is zero or more relative distinguished names, separated by
  <COMMA>, for a distinguished name.

  Implementations MUST recognize AttributeType name strings
  (descriptors) listed in the following table, but MAY recognize other
  name strings.









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     String  X.500 AttributeType
     ------  --------------------------------------------
     CN      commonName (2.5.4.3)
     L       localityName (2.5.4.7)
     ST      stateOrProvinceName (2.5.4.8)
     O       organizationName (2.5.4.10)
     OU      organizationalUnitName (2.5.4.11)
     C       countryName (2.5.4.6)
     STREET  streetAddress (2.5.4.9)
     DC      domainComponent (0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.25)
     UID     userId (0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.1)

  These attribute types are described in [RFC4519].

  Implementations MAY recognize other DN string representations.
  However, as there is no requirement that alternative DN string
  representations be recognized (and, if so, how), implementations
  SHOULD only generate DN strings in accordance with Section 2 of this
  document.

4.  Examples

  This notation is designed to be convenient for common forms of name.
  This section gives a few examples of distinguished names written
  using this notation.  First is a name containing three relative
  distinguished names (RDNs):

     UID=jsmith,DC=example,DC=net

  Here is an example of a name containing three RDNs, in which the
  first RDN is multi-valued:

     OU=Sales+CN=J.  Smith,DC=example,DC=net

  This example shows the method of escaping of a special characters
  appearing in a common name:

     CN=James \"Jim\" Smith\, III,DC=example,DC=net

  The following shows the method for encoding a value that contains a
  carriage return character:

     CN=Before\0dAfter,DC=example,DC=net

  In this RDN example, the type in the RDN is unrecognized, and the
  value is the BER encoding of an OCTET STRING containing two octets,
  0x48 and 0x69.




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     1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.0=#04024869

  Finally, this example shows an RDN whose commonName value consists of
  5 letters:

     Unicode Character                Code       UTF-8   Escaped
     -------------------------------  ------     ------  --------
     LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L           U+004C     0x4C    L
     LATIN SMALL LETTER U             U+0075     0x75    u
     LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON  U+010D     0xC48D  \C4\8D
     LATIN SMALL LETTER I             U+0069     0x69    i
     LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH ACUTE  U+0107     0xC487  \C4\87

  This could be encoded in printable ASCII [ASCII] (useful for
  debugging purposes) as:

     CN=Lu\C4\8Di\C4\87

5.  Security Considerations

  The following security considerations are specific to the handling of
  distinguished names.  LDAP security considerations are discussed in
  [RFC4511] and other documents comprising the LDAP Technical
  Specification [RFC4510].

5.1.  Disclosure

  Distinguished Names typically consist of descriptive information
  about the entries they name, which can be people, organizations,
  devices, or other real-world objects.  This frequently includes some
  of the following kinds of information:

     - the common name of the object (i.e., a person's full name)
     - an email or TCP/IP address
     - its physical location (country, locality, city, street address)
     - organizational attributes (such as department name or
       affiliation)

  In some cases, such information can be considered sensitive.  In many
  countries, privacy laws exist that prohibit disclosure of certain
  kinds of descriptive information (e.g., email addresses).  Hence,
  server implementers are encouraged to support Directory Information
  Tree (DIT) structural rules and name forms [RFC4512], as these
  provide a mechanism for administrators to select appropriate naming
  attributes for entries.  Administrators are encouraged to use
  mechanisms, access controls, and other administrative controls that
  may be available to restrict use of attributes containing sensitive
  information in naming of entries.   Additionally, use of



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  authentication and data security services in LDAP [RFC4513][RFC4511]
  should be considered.

5.2.  Use of Distinguished Names in Security Applications

  The transformations of an AttributeValue value from its X.501 form to
  an LDAP string representation are not always reversible back to the
  same BER (Basic Encoding Rules) or DER (Distinguished Encoding Rules)
  form.  An example of a situation that requires the DER form of a
  distinguished name is the verification of an X.509 certificate.

  For example, a distinguished name consisting of one RDN with one AVA,
  in which the type is commonName and the value is of the TeletexString
  choice with the letters 'Sam', would be represented in LDAP as the
  string <CN=Sam>.  Another distinguished name in which the value is
  still 'Sam', but is of the PrintableString choice, would have the
  same representation <CN=Sam>.

  Applications that require the reconstruction of the DER form of the
  value SHOULD NOT use the string representation of attribute syntaxes
  when converting a distinguished name to the LDAP format.  Instead,
  they SHOULD use the hexadecimal form prefixed by the number sign ('#'
  U+0023) as described in the first paragraph of Section 2.4.

6.  Acknowledgements

  This document is an update to RFC 2253, by Mark Wahl, Tim Howes, and
  Steve Kille.  RFC 2253 was a product of the IETF ASID Working Group.

  This document is a product of the IETF LDAPBIS Working Group.

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

  [REGISTRY]    IANA, Object Identifier Descriptors Registry,
                <http://www.iana.org/assignments/ldap-parameters>.

  [Unicode]     The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
                3.2.0" is defined by "The Unicode Standard, Version
                3.0" (Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 2000.  ISBN 0-201-
                61633-5), as amended by the "Unicode Standard Annex
                #27: Unicode 3.1"
                (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr27/) and by the
                "Unicode Standard Annex #28: Unicode 3.2"
                (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/).





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  [X.501]       International Telecommunication Union -
                Telecommunication Standardization Sector, "The
                Directory -- Models," X.501(1993) (also ISO/IEC 9594-
                2:1994).

  [X.680]       International Telecommunication Union -
                Telecommunication Standardization Sector, "Abstract
                Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) - Specification of Basic
                Notation", X.680(1997) (also ISO/IEC 8824-1:1998).

  [RFC2119]     Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
                Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

  [RFC3629]     Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
                10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.

  [RFC4234]     Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
                Specifications: ABNF", RFC 4234, October 2005.

  [RFC4510]     Zeilenga, K., Ed., "Lightweight Directory Access
                Protocol (LDAP): Technical Specification Road Map", RFC
                4510, June 2006.

  [RFC4511]     Sermersheim, J., Ed., "Lightweight Directory Access
                Protocol (LDAP): The Protocol", RFC 4511, June 2006.

  [RFC4512]     Zeilenga, K., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
                (LDAP): Directory Information Models", RFC 4512, June
                2006.

  [RFC4513]     Harrison, R., Ed., "Lightweight Directory Access
                Protocol (LDAP): Authentication Methods and Security
                Mechanisms", RFC 4513, June 2006.

  [RFC4517]     Legg, S., Ed., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
                (LDAP): Syntaxes and Matching Rules", RFC 4517, June
                2006.

  [RFC4519]     Sciberras, A., Ed., "Lightweight Directory Access
                Protocol (LDAP): Schema for User Applications", RFC
                4519, June 2006.

  [RFC4520]     Zeilenga, K., "Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
                (IANA) Considerations for the Lightweight Directory
                Access Protocol (LDAP)", BCP 64, RFC 4520, June 2006.






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7.2.  Informative References

  [ASCII]       Coded Character Set--7-bit American Standard Code for
                Information Interchange, ANSI X3.4-1986.

  [CharModel]   Whistler, K. and M. Davis, "Unicode Technical Report
                #17, Character Encoding Model", UTR17,
                <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr17/>, August
                2000.

  [Glossary]    The Unicode Consortium, "Unicode Glossary",
                <http://www.unicode.org/glossary/>.

  [X.500]       International Telecommunication Union -
                Telecommunication Standardization Sector, "The
                Directory -- Overview of concepts, models and
                services," X.500(1993) (also ISO/IEC 9594-1:1994).

  [X.511]       International Telecommunication Union -
                Telecommunication Standardization Sector, "The
                Directory: Abstract Service Definition", X.511(1993)
                (also ISO/IEC 9594-3:1993).

  [X.690]       International Telecommunication Union -
                Telecommunication Standardization Sector,
                "Specification of ASN.1 encoding rules: Basic Encoding
                Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding Rules (CER), and
                Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER)", X.690(1997) (also
                ISO/IEC 8825-1:1998).

  [RFC2849]     Good, G., "The LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) -
                Technical Specification", RFC 2849, June 2000.



















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Appendix A.  Presentation Issues

  This appendix is provided for informational purposes only; it is not
  a normative part of this specification.

  The string representation described in this document is not intended
  to be presented to humans without translation.  However, at times it
  may be desirable to present non-translated DN strings to users.  This
  section discusses presentation issues associated with non-translated
  DN strings.  Issues with presentation of translated DN strings are
  not discussed in this appendix.  Transcoding issues are also not
  discussed in this appendix.

  This appendix provides guidance for applications presenting DN
  strings to users.  This section is not comprehensive; it does not
  discuss all presentation issues that implementers may face.

  Not all user interfaces are capable of displaying the full set of
  Unicode characters.  Some Unicode characters are not displayable.

  It is recommended that human interfaces use the optional hex pair
  escaping mechanism (Section 2.3) to produce a string representation
  suitable for display to the user.  For example, an application can
  generate a DN string for display that escapes all non-printable
  characters appearing in the AttributeValue's string representation
  (as demonstrated in the final example of Section 4).

  When a DN string is displayed in free-form text, it is often
  necessary to distinguish the DN string from surrounding text.  While
  this is often done with whitespace (as demonstrated in Section 4), it
  is noted that DN strings may end with whitespace.  Careful readers of
  Section 3 will note that the characters '<' (U+003C) and '>' (U+003E)
  may only appear in the DN string if escaped.  These characters are
  intended to be used in free-form text to distinguish a DN string from
  surrounding text.  For example, <CN=Sam\ > distinguishes the string
  representation of the DN composed of one RDN consisting of the AVA
  (the commonName (CN) value 'Sam ') from the surrounding text.  It
  should be noted to the user that the wrapping '<' and '>' characters
  are not part of the DN string.

  DN strings can be quite long.  It is often desirable to line-wrap
  overly long DN strings in presentations.  Line wrapping should be
  done by inserting whitespace after the RDN separator character or, if
  necessary, after the AVA separator character.  It should be noted to
  the user that the inserted whitespace is not part of the DN string
  and is to be removed before use in LDAP.  For example, the following
  DN string is long:




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        CN=Kurt D.  Zeilenga,OU=Engineering,L=Redwood Shores,
        O=OpenLDAP Foundation,ST=California,C=US

  So it has been line-wrapped for readability.  The extra whitespace is
  to be removed before the DN string is used in LDAP.

  Inserting whitespace is not advised because it may not be obvious to
  the user which whitespace is part of the DN string and which
  whitespace was added for readability.

  Another alternative is to use the LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF)
  [RFC2849].  For example:

        # This entry has a long DN...
        dn: CN=Kurt D.  Zeilenga,OU=Engineering,L=Redwood Shores,
         O=OpenLDAP Foundation,ST=California,C=US
        CN: Kurt D.  Zeilenga
        SN: Zeilenga
        objectClass: person

Appendix B.  Changes Made since RFC 2253

  This appendix is provided for informational purposes only, it is not
  a normative part of this specification.

  The following substantive changes were made to RFC 2253:

     - Removed IESG Note.  The IESG Note has been addressed.
     - Replaced all references to ISO 10646-1 with [Unicode].
     - Clarified (in Section 1) that this document does not define a
       canonical string representation.
     - Clarified that Section 2 describes the RECOMMENDED encoding
       algorithm and that alternative algorithms are allowed.  Some
       encoding options described in RFC 2253 are now treated as
       alternative algorithms in this specification.
     - Revised specification (in Section 2) to allow short names of any
       registered attribute type to appear in string representations of
       DNs instead of being restricted to a "published table".  Removed
       "as an example" language.  Added statement (in Section 3)
       allowing recognition of additional names but require recognition
       of those names in the published table.  The table now appears in
       Section 3.
     - Removed specification of additional requirements for LDAPv2
       implementations which also support LDAPv3 (RFC 2253, Section 4)
       as LDAPv2 is now Historic.
     - Allowed recognition of alternative string representations.
     - Updated Section 2.4 to allow hex pair escaping of all characters
       and clarified escaping for when multiple octet UTF-8 encodings



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RFC 4514               LDAP: Distinguished Names               June 2006


       are present.  Indicated that null (U+0000) character is to be
       escaped.  Indicated that equals sign ('=' U+003D) character may
       be escaped as '\='.
     - Rewrote Section 3 to use ABNF as defined in RFC 4234.
     - Updated the Section 3 ABNF.  Changes include:
       + allowed AttributeType short names of length 1 (e.g., 'L'),
       + used more restrictive <oid> production in AttributeTypes,
       + did not require escaping of equals sign ('=' U+003D)
         characters,
       + did not require escaping of non-leading number sign ('#'
         U+0023) characters,
       + allowed space (' ' U+0020) to be escaped as '\ ',
       + required hex escaping of null (U+0000) characters, and
       + removed LDAPv2-only constructs.
     - Updated Section 3 to describe how to parse elements of the
       grammar.
     - Rewrote examples.
     - Added reference to documentations containing general LDAP
       security considerations.
     - Added discussion of presentation issues (Appendix A).
     - Added this appendix.

  In addition, numerous editorial changes were made.

Editor's Address

  Kurt D.  Zeilenga
  OpenLDAP Foundation

  EMail: [email protected]





















Zeilenga                    Standards Track                    [Page 14]

RFC 4514               LDAP: Distinguished Names               June 2006


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