Strong Separation

An XFN context that treats the XFN component separator as a naming system boundary supports strong separation. An XFN component separator that appears within a component to be resolved by the context must be escaped or quoted.

Support for strong separation is a property of a context. A context that supports strong separation expects to receive the name that it is going to resolve entirely in one component of the composite name structure. When a composite name is supplied to such a context, it consumes the leading component of the name; any remaining components are left to be resolved by subordinate naming systems.

An XFN context with a name syntax that is either flat or hierarchical, and does not use the XFN component separator as its atomic separator, supports strong separation. Examples of naming systems that support strong separation are DNS and NIS+, both of which have right-to-left dot-separated names. The following are examples of names with DNS and NIS+ components, respectively.

	.../wiz.com/orgunit/ppt
	orgunit/accountspayable.finance/user/jsmith