Re: Returning zero or empty string for unsupported objects

["David T. Perkins" <dperkins@dsperkins.com>]

HI,

It's OK to return a "special value", as long as the special value
is not one of the normal values. For counters, there is no
special value, and, thus, the only way to indicate that the
value is not supported is to return "noSuch".

In all cases, it's a tradeoff of "can useful management apps
be written" when an incomplete set of attribute values
are available for an instance versus the cost of writing
the app that can cope with a partial set of attribute
values.

On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> I know that we tell people not to do so and instead
> return a nuSuchInstance or noSuchObject.
> 
> But I cannot find text in an RFC that says that such is bad.
> 
> Anyone else who has a ptr?
> 
> Thanks,
> Bert 

Regards,
/david t. perkins