- Add new option CURLOPT_RESOLVER_START_FUNCTION to set a callback that
will be called every time before a new resolve request is started
(ie before a host is resolved) with a pointer to backend-specific
resolver data. Currently this is only useful for ares.
- Add new option CURLOPT_RESOLVER_START_DATA to set a user pointer to
pass to the resolver start callback.
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/2311
- In keeping with the naming of our other connect timeout options rename
CURLOPT_HAPPY_EYEBALLS_TIMEOUT to CURLOPT_HAPPY_EYEBALLS_TIMEOUT_MS.
This change adds the _MS suffix since the option expects milliseconds.
This is more intuitive for our users since other connect timeout options
that expect milliseconds use _MS such as CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS,
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS, CURLOPT_ACCEPTTIMEOUT_MS.
The tool option already uses an -ms suffix, --happy-eyeballs-timeout-ms.
Follow-up to 2427d94 which added the lib and tool option yesterday.
Ref: https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/2260
- Add new option CURLOPT_HAPPY_EYEBALLS_TIMEOUT to set libcurl's happy
eyeball timeout value.
- Add new optval macro CURL_HET_DEFAULT to represent the default happy
eyeballs timeout value (currently 200 ms).
- Add new tool option --happy-eyeballs-timeout-ms to expose
CURLOPT_HAPPY_EYEBALLS_TIMEOUT. The -ms suffix is used because the
other -timeout options in the tool expect seconds not milliseconds.
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/2260
libssh is an alternative library to libssh2.
https://www.libssh.org/
That patch set also introduces support for ECDSA
ed25519 keys, as well as gssapi authentication.
Signed-off-by: Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <nmav@redhat.com>
This bit is no longer used. It is not clear what it meant for users to
"init the TLS" in a world with different TLS backends and since the
introduction of multissl, libcurl didn't properly work if inited without
this bit set.
Not a single user responded to the call for users of it:
https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2017-11/0072.html
Reported-by: Evgeny Grin
Assisted-by: Jay Satiro
Fixes#2089Fixes#2083Closes#2107
This uses the brotli external library (https://github.com/google/brotli).
Brotli becomes a feature: additional curl_version_info() bit and
structure fields are provided for it and CURLVERSION_NOW bumped.
Tests 314 and 315 check Brotli content unencoding with correct and
erroneous data.
Some tests are updated to accomodate with the now configuration dependent
parameters of the Accept-Encoding header.
When building with -std=c++14 on cygwin, this header won't be
automatically included as it otherwise is.
The <sys/select.h> include decision should ideally be reversed and be
avoided where that header file doesn't exist.
Reported-by: Ian Fette
Fixes#1925
As it was added to multi.h simply to not break test 1135, which now has
been disabled due to the mime API addition anyway and su we can now move
the sslset stuff to where the other curl_global_* prototypes are.
To support telling a string is nul-terminated, symbol CURL_ZERO_TERMINATED
has been introduced.
Documentation updated accordingly.
symbols in versions updated. Added form API symbols deprecation info.
The CURLSSLBACKEND_WOLFSSL is supposed to be an alias for
CURLSSLBACKEND_CYASSL, but used an erronous value. To reduce the risk
for a similar mistake, define the backend aliases to use the enum values
instead.
Reported-by: Gisle Vanem
Bug: https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2017-08/0120.html
Let's add a compile time safe API to select an SSL backend. This
function needs to be called *before* curl_global_init(), and can be
called only once.
Side note: we do not explicitly test that it is called before
curl_global_init(), but we do verify that it is not called multiple times
(even implicitly).
If SSL is used before the function was called, it will use whatever the
CURL_SSL_BACKEND environment variable says (or default to the first
available SSL backend), and if a subsequent call to
curl_global_sslset() disagrees with the previous choice, it will fail
with CURLSSLSET_TOO_LATE.
The function also accepts an "avail" parameter to point to a (read-only)
NULL-terminated list of available backends. This comes in real handy if
an application wants to let the user choose between whatever SSL backends
the currently available libcurl has to offer: simply call
curl_global_sslset(-1, NULL, &avail);
which will return CURLSSLSET_UNKNOWN_BACKEND and populate the avail
variable to point to the relevant information to present to the user.
Just like with the HTTP/2 push functions, we have to add the function
declaration of curl_global_sslset() function to the header file
*multi.h* because VMS and OS/400 require a stable order of functions
declared in include/curl/*.h (where the header files are sorted
alphabetically). This looks a bit funny, but it cannot be helped.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
There is information about the compiled-in SSL backends that is really
no concern of any code other than the SSL backend itself, such as which
function (if any) implements SHA-256 summing.
And there is information that is really interesting to the user, such as
the name, or the curl_sslbackend value.
Let's factor out the latter into a publicly visible struct. This
information will be used in the upcoming API to set the SSL backend
globally.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
... regression since issue #1774 (commit 10b3df1059) since obviously
some older gcc doesn't know __powerpc__ while some newer doesn't know
__ppc__ ...
Fixes#1797Closes#1798
Reported-by: Ryan Schmidt
The required low-level logic was already available as part of
`libssh2` (via `LIBSSH2_FLAG_COMPRESS` `libssh2_session_flag()`[1]
option.)
This patch adds the new `libcurl` option `CURLOPT_SSH_COMPRESSION`
(boolean) and the new `curl` command-line option `--compressed-ssh`
to request this `libssh2` feature. To have compression enabled, it
is required that the SSH server supports a (zlib) compatible
compression method and that `libssh2` was built with `zlib` support
enabled.
[1] https://www.libssh2.org/libssh2_session_flag.html
Ref: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1732
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/1735
The long list of architectures in include/curl/system.h is annoying to
maintain, and needs to be extended for each and every architecture to
support.
Instead, let's rely on the __SIZEOF_LONG__ define of the gcc compiler
(we are in the GNUC condition anyway), which tells us if long is 4
bytes or 8 bytes.
This fixes the build of libcurl 7.55.0 on architectures such as
OpenRISC or ARC.
Closes#1766
Signed-off-by: Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>
If libcurl was built with GSS-API support, it unconditionally advertised
GSS-API authentication while connecting to a SOCKS5 proxy. This caused
problems in environments with improperly configured Kerberos: a stock
libcurl failed to connect, despite libcurl built without GSS-API
connected fine using username and password.
This commit introduces the CURLOPT_SOCKS5_AUTH option to control the
allowed methods for SOCKS5 authentication at run time.
Note that a new option was preferred over reusing CURLOPT_PROXYAUTH
for compatibility reasons because the set of authentication methods
allowed by default was different for HTTP and SOCKS5 proxies.
Bug: https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2017-01/0005.html
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/1454
typecheck-gcc expected curl_socket_t instead of curl_off_t arguments
for CURLINFO_OFF_T. Detected by test1521, unfortunately only when run
locally.
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/1592
... to enable sending "OPTIONS *" which wasn't possible previously.
This option currently only works for HTTP.
Added test cases 1298 + 1299 to verify
Fixes#1280Closes#1462
This change introduces new alternatives for the existing six
curl_easy_getinfo() options that return sizes or speeds as doubles. The
new versions are named like the old ones but with an appended '_T':
CURLINFO_CONTENT_LENGTH_DOWNLOAD_T
CURLINFO_CONTENT_LENGTH_UPLOAD_T
CURLINFO_SIZE_DOWNLOAD_T
CURLINFO_SIZE_UPLOAD_T
CURLINFO_SPEED_DOWNLOAD_T
CURLINFO_SPEED_UPLOAD_T
Closes#1511
... and support and additional "security patched" date for those who
enhance older versions that way. Pass on the define CURL_PATCHSTAMP with
a date for that.
Building with non-release headers shows the date as [unreleased].
Also: this changes the date format generated in the curlver.h file to be
"YYYY-MM-DD" (no name of the day or month, no time, no time zone) to
make it easier on the eye and easier to parse. Example (new) date
string: 2017-05-09
Suggested-by: Brian Childs
Closes#1474
Info values starting with CURLINFO_SOCKET expect a curl_socket_t, not a
curl_slist argument.
This fixes the following GCC warning when building the examples with
--enable-optimize:
../../include/curl/typecheck-gcc.h:126:42: warning: call to
‘_curl_easy_getinfo_err_curl_slist’ declared with attribute warning:
curl_easy_getinfo expects a pointer to 'struct curl_slist *' for this
info [enabled by default]
sendrecv.c:90:11: note: in expansion of macro ‘curl_easy_getinfo’
res = curl_easy_getinfo(curl, CURLINFO_ACTIVESOCKET, &sockfd);
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/1447
All the callbacks passed to curl_easy_setopt are defined as function
pointers. The possibility to pass both functions and function pointers
was handled for the callbacks that typecheck-gcc.h defined as
compatible, but not for the public callback types themselves.
This makes all compatible callback types defined in typecheck-gcc.h
function pointers too and checks all functions uniformly with
_curl_callback_compatible, which handles both functions and function
pointers.
A symptom of the problem was a warning in tool_operate.c with
--disable-libcurl-option and without --enable-debug as that file
passes the callback functions to curl_easy_setopt directly.
Fixes https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1403
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/1404
system.h is aimed to replace curlbuild.h at a later point in time when
we feel confident system.h works sufficiently well.
curl/system.h is currently used in parallel with curl/curlbuild.h
curl/system.h determines a data sizes, data types and include file
status based on available preprocessor defines instead of getting
generated at build-time. This, in order to avoid relying on a build-time
generated file that makes it complicated to do 32 and 64 bit bields from
the same installed set of headers.
Test 1541 verifies that system.h comes to the same conclusion that
curlbuild.h offers.
Closes#1373
- Add new option CURLOPT_SUPPRESS_CONNECT_HEADERS to allow suppressing
proxy CONNECT response headers from the user callback functions
CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION and CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION.
- Add new tool option --suppress-connect-headers to expose
CURLOPT_SUPPRESS_CONNECT_HEADERS and allow suppressing proxy CONNECT
response headers from --dump-header and --include.
Assisted-by: Jay Satiro
Assisted-by: CarloCannas@users.noreply.github.com
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/783
This commit introduces the CURL_SSLVERSION_MAX_* constants as well as
the --tls-max option of the curl tool.
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/1166
Replace use of fixed macro BUFSIZE to define the size of the receive
buffer. Reappropriate CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE to include enlarging receive
buffer size. Upon setting, resize buffer if larger than the current
default size up to a MAX_BUFSIZE (512KB). This can benefit protocols
like SFTP.
Closes#1222
In addition to unix domain sockets, Linux also supports an
abstract namespace which is independent of the filesystem.
In order to support it, add new CURLOPT_ABSTRACT_UNIX_SOCKET
option which uses the same storage as CURLOPT_UNIX_SOCKET_PATH
internally, along with a flag to specify abstract socket.
On non-supporting platforms, the abstract address will be
interpreted as an empty string and fail gracefully.
Also add new --abstract-unix-socket tool parameter.
Signed-off-by: Isaac Boukris <iboukris@gmail.com>
Reported-by: Chungtsun Li (typeless)
Reviewed-by: Daniel Stenberg
Reviewed-by: Peter Wu
Closes#1197Fixes#1061
CURLOPT_SOCKS_PROXY -> CURLOPT_PRE_PROXY
Added the corresponding --preroxy command line option. Sets a SOCKS
proxy to connect to _before_ connecting to a HTTP(S) proxy.
This was added as part of the SOCKS+HTTPS proxy merge but there's no
need to support this as we prefer to have the protocol specified as a
prefix instead.
Adds access to the effectively used protocol/scheme to both libcurl and
curl, both in string and numeric (CURLPROTO_*) form.
Note that the string form will be uppercase, as it is just the internal
string.
As these strings are declared internally as const, and all other strings
returned by curl_easy_getinfo() are de-facto const as well, string
handling in getinfo.c got const-ified.
Closes#1137
* HTTPS proxies:
An HTTPS proxy receives all transactions over an SSL/TLS connection.
Once a secure connection with the proxy is established, the user agent
uses the proxy as usual, including sending CONNECT requests to instruct
the proxy to establish a [usually secure] TCP tunnel with an origin
server. HTTPS proxies protect nearly all aspects of user-proxy
communications as opposed to HTTP proxies that receive all requests
(including CONNECT requests) in vulnerable clear text.
With HTTPS proxies, it is possible to have two concurrent _nested_
SSL/TLS sessions: the "outer" one between the user agent and the proxy
and the "inner" one between the user agent and the origin server
(through the proxy). This change adds supports for such nested sessions
as well.
A secure connection with a proxy requires its own set of the usual SSL
options (their actual descriptions differ and need polishing, see TODO):
--proxy-cacert FILE CA certificate to verify peer against
--proxy-capath DIR CA directory to verify peer against
--proxy-cert CERT[:PASSWD] Client certificate file and password
--proxy-cert-type TYPE Certificate file type (DER/PEM/ENG)
--proxy-ciphers LIST SSL ciphers to use
--proxy-crlfile FILE Get a CRL list in PEM format from the file
--proxy-insecure Allow connections to proxies with bad certs
--proxy-key KEY Private key file name
--proxy-key-type TYPE Private key file type (DER/PEM/ENG)
--proxy-pass PASS Pass phrase for the private key
--proxy-ssl-allow-beast Allow security flaw to improve interop
--proxy-sslv2 Use SSLv2
--proxy-sslv3 Use SSLv3
--proxy-tlsv1 Use TLSv1
--proxy-tlsuser USER TLS username
--proxy-tlspassword STRING TLS password
--proxy-tlsauthtype STRING TLS authentication type (default SRP)
All --proxy-foo options are independent from their --foo counterparts,
except --proxy-crlfile which defaults to --crlfile and --proxy-capath
which defaults to --capath.
Curl now also supports %{proxy_ssl_verify_result} --write-out variable,
similar to the existing %{ssl_verify_result} variable.
Supported backends: OpenSSL, GnuTLS, and NSS.
* A SOCKS proxy + HTTP/HTTPS proxy combination:
If both --socks* and --proxy options are given, Curl first connects to
the SOCKS proxy and then connects (through SOCKS) to the HTTP or HTTPS
proxy.
TODO: Update documentation for the new APIs and --proxy-* options.
Look for "Added in 7.XXX" marks.
We're mostly saying just "curl" in lower case these days so here's a big
cleanup to adapt to this reality. A few instances are left as the
project could still formally be considered called cURL.
Add the new option CURLOPT_KEEP_SENDING_ON_ERROR to control whether
sending the request body shall be completed when the server responds
early with an error status code.
This is suitable for manual NTLM authentication.
Reviewed-by: Jay Satiro
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/904
Since we're using CURLE_FTP_WEIRD_SERVER_REPLY in imap, pop3 and smtp as
more of a generic "failed to parse" introduce an alias without FTP in
the name.
Closes https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/975
Many applications assume the actual contents of the public types and use
that do for example forward declarations (saving them from including our
public header) which then breaks when we switch from void * to a struct
*.
I'm not convinced we were wrong, but since this practise seems
widespread enough I'm willing to (partly) step down.
Now libcurl uses the struct itself when it is built and it allows
applications to use the struct type if CURL_STRICTER is defined at the
time of the #include.
Reported-by: Peter Frühberger
Fixes#926
The preprocessor check that sets up the 32bit defines for non-configure
builds didn't work properly for MIPS systems as __mips__ is defined for
both 32bit and 64bit. Now __LP64__ is also checked and indicates 64bit.
Reported-by: Tomas Jakobsson
Fixes#813
Previously, when a stream was closed with other than NGHTTP2_NO_ERROR
by RST_STREAM, underlying TCP connection was dropped. This is
undesirable since there may be other streams multiplexed and they are
very much fine. This change introduce new error code
CURLE_HTTP2_STREAM, which indicates stream error that only affects the
relevant stream, and connection should be kept open. The existing
CURLE_HTTP2 means connection error in general.
Ref: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/659
Ref: https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/663
As these two options provide identical functionality, the former for
SOCK5 proxies and the latter for HTTP proxies, merged the two options
together.
As such CURLOPT_SOCKS5_GSSAPI_SERVICE is marked as deprecated as of
7.49.0.
So that we only do the extra typedefs in curl_memory.h when we really
need to and avoid double typedefs.
follow-up commit to 7218b52c49
Thanks-to: Steve Holme
The define is not in our name space and is therefore not protected by
our API promises.
It was only really used by libcurl internals but was mostly erased from
there already in 8aabbf5 (March 2015). This is supposedly the final
death blow to that define from everywhere.
As a side-effect, making sure _MPRINTF_REPLACE is gone and not used, I
made the lib tests in tests/libtest/ use curl_printf.h for its redefine
magic and then subsequently the use of sprintf() got banned in the tests
as well (as it is in libcurl internals) and I then replaced them all
with snprintf().
In the unlikely event that any users is actually using this define and
gets sad by this change, it is very easily copied to the user's own
code.
Supports HTTP/2 over clear TCP
- Optimize switching to HTTP/2 by removing calls to init and setup
before switching. Switching will eventually call setup and setup calls
init.
- Supports new version to “force” the use of HTTP/2 over clean TCP
- Add common line parameter “--http2-prior-knowledge” to the Curl
command line tool.
The two options are almost the same, except in the case of OpenSSL:
CURLINFO_TLS_SESSION OpenSSL session internals is SSL_CTX *.
CURLINFO_TLS_SSL_PTR OpenSSL session internals is SSL *.
For backwards compatibility we couldn't modify CURLINFO_TLS_SESSION to
return an SSL pointer for OpenSSL.
Also, add support for the 'internals' member to point to SSL object for
the other backends axTLS, PolarSSL, Secure Channel, Secure Transport and
wolfSSL.
Bug: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/234
Reported-by: dkjjr89@users.noreply.github.com
Bug: https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2015-09/0127.html
Reported-by: Michael König
Some TFTP server implementations ignore the "TFTP Option extension"
(RFC 1782-1784, 2347-2349), or implement it in a flawed way, causing
problems with libcurl. Another switch for curl_easy_setopt
"CURLOPT_TFTP_NO_OPTIONS" is introduced which prevents libcurl from
sending TFTP option requests to a server, avoiding many problems caused
by faulty implementations.
Bug: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/481
The name of the header guard in lwIP's <lwip/opt.h> has changed from
'__LWIP_OPT_H__' to 'LWIP_HDR_OPT_H' (bug #35874 in May 2015).
Other fixes:
- In curl_setup.h, the problem with an old PSDK doesn't apply if lwIP is
used.
- In memdebug.h, the 'socket' should be undefined first due to lwIP's
lwip_socket() macro.
- In curl_addrinfo.c lwIP's getaddrinfo() + freeaddrinfo() macros need
special handling because they were undef'ed in memdebug.h.
- In select.c we can't use preprocessor conditionals inside select if
MSVC and select is a macro, as it is with lwIP.
http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2015-12/0023.htmlhttp://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2015-12/0024.html
Fixes a name space pollution at the cost of programs using one of these
defines will no longer compile. However, the vast majority of libcurl
programs that do multipart formposts use curl_formadd() to build this
list.
Closes#506
This patch addresses known bug #76, where on 64-bit Windows SOCKET is 64
bits wide, but long is only 32, making CURLINFO_LASTSOCKET unreliable.
Signed-off-by: Razvan Cojocaru <rcojocaru@bitdefender.com>
- Add new option CURLOPT_DEFAULT_PROTOCOL to allow specifying a default
protocol for schemeless URLs.
- Add new tool option --proto-default to expose
CURLOPT_DEFAULT_PROTOCOL.
In the case of schemeless URLs libcurl will behave in this way:
When the option is used libcurl will use the supplied default.
When the option is not used, libcurl will follow its usual plan of
guessing from the hostname and falling back to 'http'.
New tool option --ssl-no-revoke.
New value CURLSSLOPT_NO_REVOKE for CURLOPT_SSL_OPTIONS.
Currently this option applies only to WinSSL where we have automatic
certificate revocation checking by default. According to the
ssl-compared chart there are other backends that have automatic checking
(NSS, wolfSSL and DarwinSSL) so we could possibly accommodate them at
some later point.
Bug: https://github.com/bagder/curl/issues/264
Reported-by: zenden2k <zenden2k@gmail.com>
This option can be used to enable/disable certificate status verification using
the "Certificate Status Request" TLS extension defined in RFC6066 section 8.
This also adds the CURLE_SSL_INVALIDCERTSTATUS error, to be used when the
certificate status verification fails, and the Curl_ssl_cert_status_request()
function, used to check whether the SSL backend supports the status_request
extension.
For consistency, as we seem to have a bit of a mixed bag, changed all
instances of ipv4 and ipv6 in comments and documentations to use the
correct case.
The ability to do HTTP requests over a UNIX domain socket has been
requested before, in Apr 2008 [0][1] and Sep 2010 [2]. While a
discussion happened, no patch seems to get through. I decided to give it
a go since I need to test a nginx HTTP server which listens on a UNIX
domain socket.
One patch [3] seems to make it possible to use the
CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION function to gain a UNIX domain socket.
Another person wrote a Go program which can do HTTP over a UNIX socket
for Docker[4] which uses a special URL scheme (though the name contains
cURL, it has no relation to the cURL library).
This patch considers support for UNIX domain sockets at the same level
as HTTP proxies / IPv6, it acts as an intermediate socket provider and
not as a separate protocol. Since this feature affects network
operations, a new feature flag was added ("unix-sockets") with a
corresponding CURL_VERSION_UNIX_SOCKETS macro.
A new CURLOPT_UNIX_SOCKET_PATH option is added and documented. This
option enables UNIX domain sockets support for all requests on the
handle (replacing IP sockets and skipping proxies).
A new configure option (--enable-unix-sockets) and CMake option
(ENABLE_UNIX_SOCKETS) can disable this optional feature. Note that I
deliberately did not mark this feature as advanced, this is a
feature/component that should easily be available.
[0]: http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2008-04/0279.html
[1]: http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2008/04/14/http-over-unix-domain-sockets/
[2]: http://sourceforge.net/p/curl/feature-requests/53/
[3]: http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2008-04/0361.html
[4]: https://github.com/Soulou/curl-unix-socket
Signed-off-by: Peter Wu <peter@lekensteyn.nl>
As the list has gotten a little messy and hard to read, especially with
the introduction of deprecated items, aligned the values and comments
into clean columns and reworked some of the comments in the process.
Option --pinnedpubkey takes a path to a public key in DER format and
only connect if it matches (currently only implemented with OpenSSL).
Provides CURLOPT_PINNEDPUBLICKEY for curl_easy_setopt().
Extract a public RSA key from a website like so:
openssl s_client -connect google.com:443 2>&1 < /dev/null | \
sed -n '/-----BEGIN/,/-----END/p' | openssl x509 -noout -pubkey \
| openssl rsa -pubin -outform DER > google.com.der
Removing defines, even obsolete ones that haven't been used for a very
long time, still break a lot of applications.
Bug: https://github.com/bagder/curl/pull/106
1 - fixes the warnings when built without http2 support
2 - adds CURLE_HTTP2, a new error code for errors detected by nghttp2
basically when they are about http2 specific things.
- Replace CURLAUTH_GSSNEGOTIATE with CURLAUTH_NEGOTIATE
- CURL_VERSION_GSSNEGOTIATE is deprecated which
is served by CURL_VERSION_SSPI, CURL_VERSION_GSSAPI and
CURUL_VERSION_SPNEGO now.
- Remove display of feature 'GSS-Negotiate'
We now provide the "real" names in the CINIT() macro setup for CURLOPT_*
symbols, and we provide backwards compatibility defines for the old
symbols as defines instead of vice versa.
This allows us to better use the CINIT() list to check for existing and
current option names.
