Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP Proposals for Output Script Descriptors

From: Andrew Chow <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2021 05:12:35 +0000

On 7/2/21 11:24 PM, David A. Harding wrote:
> Is there any chance we can take this opportunity to make "h"/"H" the
> preferred aliases?  Using "'" in bourne-style shells is very
> annoying[1], and I suspect it's also creating unnecessary complications
> elsewhere.
I've updated the text to use "h".
> Alternatives:
>
> - Completely kill "'" (I'd prefer this, but I realize it's complicated
>    with descriptors already being used widely).  If "h"/"H" are made the
>    preferred aliases, maybe it'd be enough to make implementing "'" a
>    SHOULD rather than a MUST; this would push implementations towards
>    displaying descriptors using the h versions for maximum compatibility.
Since there already are software implementing descriptors, I don't think
we can do this. I'm not sure about making "'" a SHOULD either.
> - Calculate the checksum over s/(h|H)/'/ (again, I know that's
>    complicated with descriptors already widely used)
This has been discussed in the past and the conclusion was that the
checksum should be strictly over the string itself. This would allow for
dumb checksum checkers which don't have to be able to parse descriptors
in order to check the checksum.

Thanks,
Andrew

>
> Thanks,
>
> -Dave
>
> [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/15740#issuecomment-695815432