Subject: [kitten] gss_oid_equal and null equality

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 14:07:16 -0400 (EDT)

I just had occasion to look at the specification of gss_oid_equal() in
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-gss-capsulate-04, and I ran
into this text:

  "The value GSS_C_NO_OID will not match any OID, including
  GSS_C_NO_OID itself."

That seems peculiar to me; I'm not familiar with any other comparison
operator for a nullable type in any language which makes null not
equal to itself.  Is there a specific reason why this behavior is
convenient?

The behavior has already shipped in Heimdal and Gnu GSS, so I guess
it's probably too late to change, but I would like to at least know
the rationale in hindsight.

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From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:30:20 -0500

> equal to itself.  Is there a specific reason why this behavior is

SQL does this sort of thing also.