comma separated parameter lists: allowed in POST request format?

[kaestli]

While table 1 of the specification says that comma-separated lists are possible for network, station, location, and channel parameters, it says for the POST format that "channel constraints parameters repeated as many times as necessary".

• with the pattern
  NET STA LOC CHA STARTTIME ENDTIME

with that wording it seems not exactly clear whether
network=CH&station=LLS,DAVOX&starttime=2010-01-01T00:00:00&endtime=2020-01-01T00:00:00

is allowed to translate, in POST, to
CH LLS,DAVOX * * 2010-01-01T00:00:00 2020-01-01T00:00:00

, or whether the post request should be

CH LLS * * 2010-01-01T00:00:00 2020-01-01T00:00:00
CH DAVOX * * 2010-01-01T00:00:00 2020-01-01T00:00:00

[chad-earthscope]

@kaestli I agree that this should be clarified.
Do you have any opinion on which is preferred?
Can you suggest some wording to clarify?

[kaestli]

Proposed wording:
"
In POST request format, stream identifiers (NET, STA, LOC, CHA) are unary strings, which may contain, or be replaced by, "*" as a wildcard for "any (zero to n-character) string", and "?" as a wildcard for "one character". Comma-separated identifier lists are not accepted (use multiple request lines instead).
"

[chad-earthscope]

For what it's worth, the EarthScope/IRIS service has and continues to support lists in the POST form.
While it can be a simplification for implementations we would have trouble conforming the the "Comma-separated identifier lists are not accepted." portion of the suggestion.

[crotwell]

This feels like something that should be allowed but not required of servers. Clients probably shouldn't do it if they want to be broadly compatible with all fdsn servers. But I also disagree with explicitly prohibiting it, as it seems a pretty useful syntax.