RFC 3642 · INFORMATIONAL · 2003

Common Elements of Generic String Encoding Rules Encodings

Overview

RFC 3642, “Common Elements of Generic String Encoding Rules Encodings”, is an Informational document published in October 2003 by S. Legg. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.

Abstract

The Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER) describe a human readable text encoding for an Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) value of any ASN.1 type. Specifications making use of GSER may wish to provide an equivalent Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) description of the GSER encoding for a particular ASN.1 type as a convenience for implementors. This document supports such specifications by providing equivalent ABNF for the GSER encodings for ASN.1 types that commonly occur in Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) syntaxes.

Abstract as published in the RFC, via rfc-editor.org.

What “Informational” means

Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.

Read this RFC

The canonical text of RFC 3642 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.

Other RFCs from 2003

Who Is Online

In total there are 57 users online: 0 registered, 53 guests and 4 bots.

Most users ever online was 1,226 on 13 Jun 2026, 3:56 am.

Bots: Applebot Other Bot Other Crawler SemrushBot

Users active in the past 15 minutes. Total registered members: 354