Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Jump to bottom

Define "undefined" and "implementation-defined" (3.1.1 port of #3449) #3805

Merged
merged 2 commits into from
May 16, 2024
Merged

Define "undefined" and "implementation-defined" (3.1.1 port of #3449) #3805

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
68838a3
Define "undefined" and "implementation-defined" (3.1.1)
handrews May 3, 2024
baab867
Review feedback from notEthan and ralfhandl
handrews May 8, 2024
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
13 changes: 13 additions & 0 deletions versions/3.1.1.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -99,6 +99,19 @@ Some examples of possible media type definitions:
The HTTP Status Codes are used to indicate the status of the executed operation.
Status codes SHOULD be selected from the available status codes registered in the [IANA Status Code Registry](https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-status-codes.xhtml).

##### <a name="undefinedAndImplementationDefinedBehavior"></a>Undefined and Implementation-Defined Behavior

This specification deems certain situations to have either _undefined_ or _implementation-defined_ behavior.

Behavior described as _undefined_ is likely, at least in some circumstances, to result in outcomes that contradict the specification.
This description is used when detecting the contradiction is impossible or impractical.
Implementations MAY support undefined scenarios for historical reasons, including ambiguous text in prior versions of the specification.
This support might produce correct outcomes in many cases, but relying on it is NOT RECOMMENDED as there is no guarantee that it will work across all tools or with future specification versions, even if those versions are otherwise strictly compatible with this one.

Behavior described as _implementation-defined_ allows implementations to choose which of several different-but-compliant approaches to a requirement to implement.
This documents ambiguous requirements that API description authors are RECOMMENDED to avoid in order to maximize interoperability.
Unlike undefined behavior, it is safe to rely on implementation-defined behavior if _and only if_ it can be guaranteed that all relevant tools support the same behavior.

## Specification

### Versions
Expand Down