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IETF RFC 7888
Last modified on Wednesday, May 18th, 2016
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Melnikov, Ed.
Request for Comments: 7888 Isode Ltd
Obsoletes: 2088 May 2016
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721
IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals
 Abstract
The Internet Message Access Protocol (RFC 3501) contains the
"literal" syntactic construct for communicating strings. When
sending a literal from client to server, IMAP requires the client to
wait for the server to send a command continuation request between
sending the octet count and the string data. This document specifies
an alternate form of literal that does not require this network round
trip.
This document specifies 2 IMAP extensions: LITERAL+ and LITERAL-.
LITERAL+ allows the alternate form of literals in all IMAP commands.
LITERAL- is the same as LITERAL+, but it disallows the alternate form
of literals unless they are 4096 bytes or less.
This document obsoletes RFC 2088.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7888.
Melnikov Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published or made publicly available before November
10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
than English.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Considerations on When to Use and Not to Use Synchronizing
Literals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. LITERAL- Capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Interaction with BINARY Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Interaction with MULTIAPPEND Extension . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Formal Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix A. Changes since RFC 2088 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
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RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
1. Introduction
The Internet Message Access Protocol [RFC 3501] contains the "literal"
syntactic construct for communicating strings. When sending a
literal from client to server, IMAP requires the client to wait for
the server to send a command continuation request between sending the
octet count and the string data. This document specifies an
alternate form of literal that does not require this network round
trip.
This document specifies 2 IMAP extensions: LITERAL+ and LITERAL-.
LITERAL+ allows the alternate form of literals (called "non-
synchronized literals" below) in all IMAP commands. LITERAL- is the
same as LITERAL+, but it disallows the alternate form of literals
unless they are 4096 bytes or less.
2. Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119].
In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and
server, respectively. If a single "C:" or "S:" label applies to
multiple lines, then the line breaks between those lines are for
editorial clarity only and are not part of the actual protocol
exchange.
3. Specification
The non-synchronizing literal is added as an alternate form of
literal, and it may appear in communication from client to server
instead of the IMAP [RFC 3501] form of literal. The IMAP form of
literal, used in communication from client to server, is referred to
as a synchronizing literal. The non-synchronizing literal form MUST
NOT be sent from server to client.
Non-synchronizing literals may be used with any IMAP server
implementation that returns "LITERAL+" or "LITERAL-" as one of the
supported capabilities to the CAPABILITY command. If the server does
not advertise either of the above capabilities, the client can only
use synchronizing literals. The difference between LITERAL+ and
LITERAL- extensions is explained in Section 5.
The non-synchronizing literal is distinguished from the original
synchronizing literal by having a plus ('+') between the octet count
and the closing brace ('}'). The server does not generate a command
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RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
continuation request in response to a non-synchronizing literal, and
clients are not required to wait before sending the octets of a non-
synchronizing literal.
The protocol receiver of an IMAP server MUST check the end of every
received line (a sequence of octets that ends with a CRLF) for an
open brace ('{') followed by an octet count, a plus ('+'), and a
close brace ('}') immediately preceding the CRLF. This sequence (if
found by the receiver) is the octet count of a non-synchronizing
literal, and the server MUST treat the specified number of following
octets and the following line (as defined in [RFC 3501]) as part of
the same command.
It's important to note that the literal is not delimited by CRLF. It
ends after the number of bytes specified by the octet count, and the
current command continues from there. There might be a CRLF
immediately after; it ends the command. Or, there might be more
octets, specifying other command parameters, before the CRLF. If a
SP (space) character is needed between parameters, it's important
that the SP appear after the literal, in its appropriate place.
A server MAY still process commands and reject errors on a line-by-
line basis, as long as it checks for non-synchronizing literals at
the end of each line.
Example:
C: A001 LOGIN {11+}
C: FRED FOOBAR {7+}
C: fat man
S: A001 OK LOGIN completed
This is semantically equivalent to this version that uses quoted
strings instead of literals:
C: A001 LOGIN "FRED FOOBAR" "fat man"
S: A001 OK LOGIN completed
Note that the space after FOOBAR in the first version corresponds
to the space between the two quoted strings in the second.
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RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
4. Considerations on When to Use and Not to Use Synchronizing Literals
Understanding of this section is important for both client and server
developers of this IMAP extension.
While non-synchronizing literals have clear advantages for clients,
such as simplicity of use, they might be more difficult to handle on
the server side. When a client uses a non-synchronizing literal that
is too big for the server to accept, a server implementation that is
compliant with LITERAL+ has to make a choice between a couple non-
optimal choices:
1. Read the number of bytes specified in the non-synchronizing
literal and reject the command that included the literal anyway.
(The server is allowed to send the tagged BAD/NO response before
reading the whole non-synchronizing literal.) This is quite
wasteful of bandwidth if the literal is large.
2. Send an untagged BYE response explaining the reason for rejecting
the literal (possibly accompanied by an ALERT response code in
another response) and close the connection. This will force the
client to reconnect or report the error to the user. In the
latter case, the error is unlikely to be understandable to the
user. Additionally, some naive clients are known to blindly
reconnect in this case and repeat the operation that caused the
problem, introducing an infinite loop.
The problem described above is most common when using the APPEND
command, because most commands don't need to send lots of data from
the client to the server. Some server implementations impose limits
on literals (both synchronizing and non-synchronizing) accepted from
clients in order to defend against denial-of-service attacks.
Implementations can generally impose much lower limits on literal
sizes for all commands other than APPEND. In order to address
literal size issue in APPEND, this document introduces a new
extension LITERAL-, described in Section 5.
The situation can also be improved by implementing support for the
APPENDLIMIT extension [RFC 7889], which allows a server to advertise
its APPEND limit, so that well-behaved clients can check it and avoid
uploading big messages in the first place.
5. LITERAL- Capability
The LITERAL- extension is almost identical to LITERAL+, with one
exception: when LITERAL- is advertised, non-synchronizing literals
used in any command MUST NOT be larger than 4096 bytes. Any literal
larger than 4096 bytes MUST be sent as a synchronizing literal as
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RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
specified in RFC 3501. A server that is compliant with LITERAL- and
encounters a non-synchronizing literal larger than 4096 bytes
proceeds as described in Section 4. If responding to an APPEND
command, the tagged BAD response MUST contain the TOOBIG response
code [RFC 4469]. If responding with an untagged BYE response, it
SHOULD include the TOOBIG response code. Note that the form of the
non-synchronizing literal does not change: it still uses the "+" in
the literal itself, even if the applicable extension is LITERAL-.
Because LITERAL- is a more restricted version of LITERAL+, IMAP
servers MUST NOT advertise both of these capabilities at the same
time. (A server implementation can choose to have a configuration
option to indicate which one to advertise.)
6. Interaction with BINARY Extension
[RFC 4466] updated the non-terminal "literal8" defined in [RFC 3516] to
allow for non-synchronizing literals if both BINARY [RFC 3516] and
LITERAL+ extensions are supported by the server.
This document also allows use of this extended "literal8" syntax when
both BINARY [RFC 3516] and LITERAL- extensions are supported by the
server.
7. Interaction with MULTIAPPEND Extension
[RFC 3502] describes MULTIAPPEND extension and how it can be used with
LITERAL+. The LITERAL- extension can be used with the MULTIAPPEND
extension in the same way.
8. Formal Syntax
The following syntax specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur
Form (ABNF) notation as specified in [ABNF].
Non-terminals referenced but not defined below are as defined by
[RFC 3501].
literal = "{" number ["+"] "}" CRLF *CHAR8
; Number represents the number of CHAR8 octets
CHAR8 = <defined in RFC 3501>
literal8 = <defined in RFC 4466>
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RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
9. Security Considerations
Use of non-synchronizing literals can consume extra resources (e.g.
memory) on IMAP servers and can be used for denial-of-service
attacks. The LITERAL- extension partially improved this situation.
This document doesn't raise any security concerns beyond those raised
by [RFC 3501].
10. IANA Considerations
IMAP4 capabilities are registered by publishing a Standards Track or
IESG-approved Experimental RFC. The registry is currently located at
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/imap-capabilities>.
IANA has updated the above registry so that the reference for
"LITERAL+" points to this document.
IANA has added the "LITERAL-" capability to the above registry, with
this document as the reference.
11. References
11.1. Normative References
[ABNF] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5234, January 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5234>.
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2119>.
[RFC 3501] Crispin, M., "INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION
4rev1", RFC 3501, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3501, March 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3501>.
[RFC 3516] Nerenberg, L., "IMAP4 Binary Content Extension", RFC 3516,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 3516, April 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3516>.
[RFC 4466] Melnikov, A. and C. Daboo, "Collected Extensions to IMAP4
ABNF", RFC 4466, DOI 10.17487/RFC 4466, April 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 4466>.
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RFC 7888 IMAP4 Non-synchronizing Literals May 2016
[RFC 4469] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)
CATENATE Extension", RFC 4469, DOI 10.17487/RFC 4469, April
2006, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 4469>.
11.2. Informative References
[RFC 3502] Crispin, M., "Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) -
MULTIAPPEND Extension", RFC 3502, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3502,
March 2003, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3502>.
[RFC 7889] SrimushnamBoovaraghamoorthy, J. and N. Bisht, "The IMAP
APPENDLIMIT Extension", RFC 7889, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7889,
May 2016, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7889>.
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Appendix A. Changes since RFC 2088
Added IANA registration.
Updated references. Also updated considerations about interactions
of IMAP extensions.
Added implementation considerations based on the IMAP mailing list
discussions.
Added description of a new capability: LITERAL-.
Acknowledgments
John G. Myers edited the original LITERAL+ extension.
Valuable comments, both in agreement and in dissent, were received
from Dave Cridland, Michael M. Slusarz, Arnt Gulbrandsen, Jayantheesh
SrimushnamBoovaraghamoorthy, Jamie Nicolson, Barry Leiba, and SM.
Author's Address
Alexey Melnikov (editor)
Isode Ltd
14 Castle Mews
Hampton, Middlesex TW12 2NP
United Kingdom
Email: Alexey.Melnikov@isode.com
Melnikov Standards Track PAGE 9
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 17375 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Wednesday, May 18th, 2016
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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