empty attribute values are being treated falsely as parsing error

[Nikita Ronja]

Is a linebreak considered an empty value?

		b, err := os.ReadFile(*f)
		if err != nil {
			fmt.Println(err)
		}
		res, err = pkg.ParseUsers(string(b))

where ParseUsers(b) is a function which utilizes ldif.Parse, for an ldif file with several entries I get "Error in line 29: empty value" even when I cut it down to the first two chunks of entries and the file has no line 29 (sorry for the words used, I merely write code which deals with data I get handed and don't have much experience with ldap).

My assumption from the ldif dump I got, and the tests I've seen in your code, is that ldif entries are separated by linebreaks. Why does this happen?

[Nikita Ronja]

it is possible that the file I was given as an example was mangled

[Nikita Ronja]

 5)  When a zero-length attribute value is to be included directly
          in an LDIF file, it MUST be represented as
          AttributeDescription ":" FILL SEP.  For example, "seeAlso:"
          followed by a newline represents a zero-length "seeAlso"
          attribute value.  It is also permissible for the value
          referred to by a URL to be of zero length.

quote from https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2849

yet you seem to handle empty attribute values as errors.

[Nikita Ronja]

rough solution: https://github.com/nikkicoon/ldif/commits/master/?since=2024-06-17&until=2024-06-17
If you give me feedback, I can polish this up and send in a proper PR. I'm not that interested in maintaining a solution for my company only if it can be avoided.

This does treat no empty attribute value as error, which - in my understanding of the specs - should be spec conform.