[HECnet] Is 00000A a valid DECnet node name?

[Thomas DeBellis]

Thanks!!

Tops-20 does case folding also, although it's not be a matter of taste.  
The monitor database is a hash table based on SIXBIT, which (of course) 
does not have any lower case.  Makes node name comparison pretty quick: 
a single instruction.  Tops-10 does case-folding also; they share DECnet 
code in a number of cases.

SETND2 doesn't use hash tables but rather sorted tables.  The node names 
are kept in a TBLUK% format table (in ASCII) so that they can be managed 
with TBADD% and TBDEL% and searched with TBLUK%.  The real value is you 
can then parse for them directly with COMND% and get escape recognition 
and completion; this helps when trying to understand certain bugs, but 
it is slower.

There is a separate list sorted by address, so look ups (I.E., binary 
searches) can be done.

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 6/18/21 5:13 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
> Yes.
>
> The actual rule is exactly what you describe in COMND%: a valid node name consists of 1-6 alphanumerics including at least one letter.  It doesn't have to be at the start, unlike, say, variable names in most programming languages.
>
> Some DECnet implementations do case folding, converting lower case to upper (which is generally considered the standard form).  I don't know if that is universally done.  RSTS/E is an example of an implementation that has the case folding.
>
> 	paul
>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On Jun 18, 2021, at 5:03 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>> I know that a DECnet node can be a maximum of six characters long with only the numerals 0 (zero) to 9 (nine) and the letters A to Z.  However, I noticed some code in COMND% that checks to see that a node name has at least one alphabetic character in it.  I had never thought about that and was wondering what the actual standard says (or where that standard is).
>>
>> Does is matter where the letter is?  In other words, are five numeral zero's followed by the letter 'A' valid?  Is '00000A' OK?
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