Original text:
versions are four-byte sequences with no additional constraints on format.  Leading zeros SHOULD be omitted for brevity. <del> Syntax: </del>  Where multiple versions are listed, the order of the values reflects the server's preference (with the first value being the most

Reviewer comments:
Use the correct ABNF grammar to express repetition and fix the Reserved Frame Type link.
There is some baggage with this parameter - URL People were a bit grumpy with changing their parser 18 months ago, I think they might be even grumpier now that we have even more client implementations in the wild. What is the benefit of this change? I think we need an issue for due process and discussion.
Oh joy. This caused me to go look at our parser in Chrome, and realized we're still doing the old (pre 1097) quic=;quic= format. So Chrome has work to do no matter how we resolve this. That being said, I'd really rather not have two different ways to do this, so +1 to NAME 's comment on the motivation.
I can remove the additional unquoted token change and keep this PR purely as editorial fix. Before the PR, the current text does not have correct ABNF grammar. I added the unquoted token variant since it is permitted (but not required) by the grammar at URL Since HTTP/3 over QUIC is not the only user of this Alt-Svc header, I can imagine that generic parsers are written such that they already understand the unquoted token value. Thus, adding support for this should not be an additional burden? I have no strong opinion here. The additional CPU cost of handling both unquoted and quoted forms should be neglible. Disallowing the unquoted form is a restriction of the RFC 7838 grammar. Should I bring this to the list and/or create a new issue?
Let's create a new issue. You're correct that non-HTTP/3 implementations might need to handle this - hence the original issue which related back to structured headers (an attempt at defining some best practice in this regard -URL). Part of the problem is not CPU cost of DQUOTEs but expressing "a list of versions" and making sure that implementations know how to do that. Alt-Svc defines the parameter syntax but not how to handle repetition of parameters.
I removed the single quote change, this should be a purely editorial fix now. I'll create a new issue for the unquoted parameter value. The "list of versions" situation does not change, if you only support one version you would write: If you support multiple, you would still use one parameter, but you have to quote it since a comma is not valid in a .
According to URL, the Alt-Svc parameter value can be unquoted: This means that this can be written: instead of only: The current text in URL forbids the unquoted variant which is an additional constraint on the RFC 7838 grammar. Should unquoted parameter values also be permitted? Note that this does not change the situation when multiple versions are supported since an unquoted "token" type is not allowed to contain commas. See also the discussion in .
RFC 7838 allows unquoted strings, but there's nothing preventing new specifications of Alt-Svc parameters from being more restrictive. I'm not sure the added flexibility of allowing unquoted versions buys us much here, and it comes at an implementation cost.
If alt-svc can be specified in configuration files, it is likely to result in interop issues if unquoted is not permitted.
I support allowing unquoted token for alt-svc quic parameter. quic=1 and quic="1" are semantically the same, and there is no reason to disallow unquoted token. Moreover, requiring quoted-string means that we cannot use generic alt-svc parser because such parser can parse quic=1 without an error. You need to write your own parser to detect that the DQUOTE is really there. If you think that detecting it is not necessary, then requiring quoted-string is not necessary in the first place.
People and implementers will be surprised (and do wrong) if the rules and constraints of RFC7838 aren't kept.
To highlight my earlier point, on slack the following was posted The issue appears to not be the unquoted ma=3600, but it does suggest we will see unquoted strings in the wild, and URL is said to also use unquoted ma=3600.
But that's the ma= field, not the quic= field, right? (This issue is about the quic= field, I think)
As I said elsewhere, the current text in draft-23 stems from a Structured Headers issue related to wanting to advertise multiple versions of QUIC. URL Alt-Svc isn't a structured one but if it were (e.g. if someone wanted to write a generic Structured Header parser) then there was a danger that the rules preventing dictionary key repetition would have prevented an endpoint sending multiple parameters e.g. . To mitigate the risk, the quic parameter was changed to a DQUOTED comma-separated list as part of URL This issue addresses the correctness within the Alt-Svc spec but does it reopen the can related to Structured Headers?
I think that the problem here is independent from whether structured headers should be applied or not. - Structured header issue: duplicate keys. - Invalid grammar according to RFC 7838 since "token" does not include commas. - valid grammar according to both RFC 7838 and the QUIC description. However, if only a single version has to be advertised, then the quoting is not necessary: - valid grammar according to both RFC 7838 and the QUIC description. - valid grammar according to both RFC 7838, but QUIC currently forbids it. In I proposed to fix the grammar (editorial issue). However, at the same time I could also make the grammar match RFC 7838 (the last bullet point above). NAME I would mind not making the semantics more restrictive (e.g. restricting the values of the QUIC parameter to hexadecimal only), but restricting the parser grammar would impose extra restrictions on those who have to generate the header. It is conceivable that implementations will continue accepting the RFC 7838 grammar, and end up accepting while others would reject it and accept only. By making sure that the grammars align, I hope that this becomes a non-issue. So far NAME NAME and NAME seems to support this proposal and NAME is not sure. Can this be considered consensus? :smiley:

Revised text:
versions are four-byte sequences with no additional constraints on format.  Leading zeros SHOULD be omitted for brevity.  <ins> Syntax of the "quic" parameter value: </ins> Where multiple versions are listed, the order of the values reflects the server's preference (with the first value being the most