Dear Marco, Marco Davids wrote:

Listmembers,

I have a question concerning chapter '1.2.2 as-set' of document ripe-251.

I believe that I found an as-set record that is not right, but I am not exactly sure (allright, our maxpand-script found the strange record, because it choked on it).

The object below is correct according to RPSL definition ( and this is the official language of the RIPE Database since 23 April 2001). I included below an extract from the database reference manual (ripe-251): "A database object is defined as a list of attribute-value pairs in text. Each attribute-value pair is written on a separate line. The attribute name starts at column 0, followed by the character " : " and followed by the value of the attribute. The attribute that has the same name as the object's class should be specified first. An attribute's value can be split over multiple lines, by having a space, a tab or a plus ("+") character as the first character of the continuation lines. The character "+" for line continuation allows attribute values to contain blank lines. More spaces may optionally be used after the continuation character to increase readability. The order of attribute-value pairs is significant. An object's description may contain comments. A comment can be anywhere in an object's definition, it starts at the first "#" character on a line and ends at the first end-of-line character. A comment cannot start at column 0. White space characters can be used to improve readability. The object's representation ends when a blank line is encountered." Please be aware that you may encounter even more strangely formatted objects. Hope this helps, Regards, Andrei Robachevsky RIPE NCC

It concerns AS-KQES:

marco@achilles:~$ whois AS-KQES | more % This is the RIPE Whois server. % The objects are in RPSL format. % Please visit http://www.ripe.net/rpsl for more information. % Rights restricted by copyright. % See http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/copyright.html

as-set: AS-KQES descr: Macro for KPNQwest Spain members: AS2134 # KPNQwest Spain members: AS8318 # Valenciana de Cementos members: AS-JAZZTRANS # Jazz Telecom - JazzNet announces members: AS12430 # AIRTEL members: AS12479 # Uni2

Are these #-remarks in compliance with the RIPE-documents?

And if not, should such input be refused by the check?

Greetings,

-- Marco Davids SARA / High Performance Networking - Amsterdam

"A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

-- Andrei