QPACK Appendix B: nameIndex

[kazu-yamamoto]

It seems to me that nameIndex appears suddenly in Appendix B. What's that? Is it the same as nameIdx?

[martinthomson]

Yikes, that original name was a little hard to follow.

It strikes me that this code could be improved by consistently choosing either Idx or Index throughout. Though that might require some additional attention to line length if the longer (and better) option is chosen.

[afrind]

Broader question: do we still feel like the pseudocode is useful in general?

[kazu-yamamoto]

Let's suppose that nameIdx and nameIndex are the same.

The next question is how getNameIndex should behave?

The return value (nameIdx) is compared with staticTable.size. But it is also used for dynamic table. If my understanding is correct, the index spaces of the two table are independent. I cannot understand what is returned from getNameIndex.

Can getNameIndex return None? If nameIdx can be None, nameIdx <= staticTable.size is supposed to be True? If it cannot be None, it means that an index for the name can be always found, which, I think, is not realistic.

[afrind]

The code comes from a time when the index space was unified, and the first staticTable.size indexes were static and the rest were dynamic. And yes, getNameIndex can return "not found". I'll add some comments explaining this case and sanitize the pseudocode.

[kazu-yamamoto]

@afrind Thank you for your answer. Let's close this in favor of #3577.