JDK-8165199: UUID.fromString(str) compliance checking?

[Andrew Leonard]

hi,
So i'm just taking a look at what appears quite a simple bug : 
https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8165199 , at least the fix is 
simple to make UUID.fromString(str) strictly uuid bnf compliant. However, 
I wanted to get community opinion on potential "compliance" issues with 
doing such a fix?
As it currently stands the method will allow any string up to 36 
characters containing 4 "-"'s, eg: this would be valid
    abc-123-123-123-abc123
whereas a properly formatted UUID string should be hex values of lengths 
8-4-4-4-12.

There are obvious implications in increasing the validation that it could 
break some existing applications that were either knowing or un-knowingly 
specifying the strings in a non-spec way...

am I just being paranoid..!? Thoughts?

Thanks
Andrew

Andrew Leonard
Java Runtimes Development
IBM Hursley
IBM United Kingdom Ltd
Phone internal: 245913, external: 01962 815913
internet email: andrew_m_leonard at uk.ibm.com 


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